The Conservatives would win fewer seats than the Scottish National Party (SNP) if there was a General Election tomorrow. This means the Tories would be wiped out as the official opposition, a veteran Conservative politician warned today (October 18).
Sir Charles Walker, MP for Broxbourne since 2005, made the claim after another devastating poll for the Tories. The Conservatives' worst defeat in the last century was the 165 seats it won in 1997.
But in a poll of polls over the weekend, the Electoral Calculus website estimated the Tories would win just 48 seats if an election was tomorrow - with the SNP winning 52, reports the Mirror. Labour would win 507 seats, according to the 'advanced modelling' of opinion polls of 11,358 people, giving the party a 364-seat majority.
Sir Charles told BBC Radio 4's The World At One: "If there was a General Election tomorrow - which there won't be - we'd be a smaller party than the SNP. We wouldn't even be the party of opposition.
"That's bound to concern colleagues - hundreds of colleagues. The Prime Minister's position is enormously precarious.
"When you are in this sort of position I think you have got to expect the party won't tolerate for any length of time - certainly not weeks." Today, new Chancellor Jeremy Hunt ditched almost all of Prime Minister Liz Truss's tax cuts announced in the Government's mini-budget three weeks ago.
Some Tory backbenchers have been talking about how to remove Ms Truss as Prime Minister after market turmoil. But Mr Hunt - who replaced Kwasi Kwarteng as Chancellor on Friday after he lasted just 38 in the role - insisted Ms Truss is still in charge of the Government.
He urged the party to unite behind Ms Truss, who became Prime Minister at the start of last month.
