Conservatives facing “worst ever defeat” says polling expert

Britain’s Conservatives could end up with around 140 seats if an election was held now, according to polling expert Sir John Curtice, a worse result than the 1997 election when Tony Blair secured a landslide Labour majority. Curtice said the current polls, combined with the threat posed by the right-wing Reform party and the possibility of tactical voting leaves the Tory party facing its “worst ever defeat”. “That is how serious (a position), potentially, the party could find itself in, given the scale of the loss that it’s currently suffering,” he says on the latest episode of Trendy, a Tortoise political trends podcast. The Tories currently hold 349 seats in the Commons; the latest YouGov poll has Labour on a 24-point lead over the Conservatives ahead of an expected October election.