LIZ Truss’s government is in a worse position than John Major’s, polling guru Sir John Curtice has warned.
Sir John, professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde, said: “If you take the seven polls that have been conducted since the closure of the Conservative conference in the middle of last week, we are looking at Labour at 51 and the Conservatives at 24, so we’re looking at a 27-point Labour lead. Since the fiscal statement…we’ve seen a 9% swing from Conservative to Labour.
“The ERM crisis, Black Wednesday, was the last time a Conservative administration got into trouble with the financial markets. That also cost the Conservatives badly and it cost the Conservatives in a way from which they never subsequently recover.
“But to give you some idea of the scale of what’s happened, even in the wake of the financial difficulties of 1992, the swing against the Conservatives was of the order of seven and a half points. So, this is speedier than what happened in 1992.”
Speaking to Tom Harwood on GB News, he said: “After the ERM crisis of 1992, the economy did rather well but it never enabled the Conservatives to profit, so you shouldn’t necessarily assume that growth will deliver political dividends.
On the Conservative’s prospects, Sir John added: “History doesn’t necessarily repeat itself, but I think what Conservative MPs do need to be aware of is that the ingredients for the cake of a Labour victory have been assembled. The question is, do they end up being combined and go into the electoral oven? That’s still uncertainty, but the risk is very, very clearly there.”
