Zero Tory MPs will be left in Inner London, predicts shock poll showing Labour storming to landslide victory
The Tories face being left with zero MPs in Inner London, according to a shock poll which showed a landslide Labour victory.
The YouGov survey predicted that the Conservatives would see their number of seats in the capital plummeting from 21 to just four.
Rishi Sunak’s party would lose its last three remaining seats in Inner London: Cities of London and Westminster, Chelsea and Fulham, and the new seat of Kensington and Bayswater.
Labour would win all these seats and see its total number of constituencies in the city rise from 49 to 65.
The only seats the Conservatives would retain in London would be on the outer edges of the city in Hornchurch and Upminster, Orpington, Old Bexley and Sidcup, and Romford, with the last two being close contests against Labour.
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith would lose to Labour in Chingford and Woodford Green, as would Steve Tuckwell, in Boris Johnson’s former constituency of Uxbridge and South Ruislip.
The Liberal Democrats would gain three, to six, including Wimbledon, Carshalton and Wallington, and Sutton and Cheam.
Just outside London, they would seize Esher and Walton which was represented by former Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab.
The poll findings did not take account of Jeremy Corbyn running as an Independent in Islington North.
Nationally, Labour would gain 422 seats, the Conservatives would be reduced to just 140, the Liberal Democrats would get 48, the Scottish National Party 17, Plaid Cymure two and Greens two.
So Labour would get a majority of 194, bigger than Tony Blair’s of 179 in 1997.
The fieldwork was also carried out before Nigel Farage announced he was taking over as leader of Reform UK which is another major blow to Mr Sunak.
Mr Farage could make it more difficult for Tory MPs in Outer London to hold on.
The poll put the careers of many Tory Cabinet ministers at risk.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt (Godalming and Ash), Defence Secretary Grant Shapps (Welwyn Hatfield), Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) and Justice Secretary Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) would all lose their seats, under the YouGov projection.
The large-scale research is not a typical survey but a “Multi-level Regression and Post-stratification (MRP)” model.
That uses existing polling data to extrapolate expected results across every UK constituency on July 4.
The projection for Labour would be the highest number of seats of any party since Stanley Baldwin won a Conservative majority of 208 in 1924.
YouGov said its MRP model had been benchmarked to correctly estimate the 2019 General Election result to within a couple of seats of each party’s actual performance then. It has been used to successfully predict elections as recently as Spain’s in July 2023, the company said.