Grant Shapps has insisted the Conservatives “absolutely” can turn around their electoral fortunes in the wake of a poll that suggests the party is heading for a 1997-style wipeout.
The poll, conducted by YouGov, predicts that the Conservative Party would win just 169 seats, with Labour on 385.
It would give Labour leader Keir Starmer a majority of 120 seats.
The poll, based on a survey of 14,000 people, also indicates that every single seat in the so-called “Red Wall” won by the Conservatives at the 2019 election would be lost.
11 cabinet ministers are also set to lose their seats based on the poll’s findings.
In total, the Conservatives would lose 196 seats — which compares to the 178 seats lost by former prime minister John Major in 1997.
The poll comes ahead of a key week for Rishi Sunak with the Rwanda bill returning to the House of Commons on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Asked this morning if he believes the Conservatives could turn the situation around, defence secretary Grant Shapps Times Radio: “Absolutely. And look, the reason I think we can turn it around is because at least people know we have got a plan and we are working to it. There isn’t a plan under Labour.”
Shapps also insisted “there isn’t an election tomorrow”, adding that the Conservatives “do have a plan and that plan is starting to work”.
“Inflation being slashed, the number of small boats down by over a third, 36 per cent in fact. So we have a plan which we are working to. Actually there isn’t an election tomorrow, people know that, but when they are faced with the choice they will be looking at whether to elect Keir Starmer and Labour and we would be right back to square one again.
“So our plan that is working against going back to square one. Labour don’t have a plan for these issues.”
Also speaking to Sky News this morning, the defence secretary, whose seat would be lost on the current polling, said: “I always consider my seat to be a marginal seat and I always fight it very hard.”
He added that polling was not conducted in his Welwyn Hatfield constituency and said it was an “extrapolation”.
Meanwhile, the prime minister has been warned his party will be “destroyed” at the next general election unless he delivers on his pledge to stop the boats.
Sir Simon Clarke, the former cabinet minister under Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, said the “time for half measures is over” as he responded to the new YouGov poll.
Sir Simon tweeted: “This result would represent a disaster for [the Conservatives] and our country. The time for half measures is over. We either deliver on small boats or we will be destroyed.”
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