Meet the last Tory MP standing as new poll suggests election wipeout

Liz Truss leaves after Jeremy Hunt’s address

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The Conservatives are facing an almost complete wipeout in the next election, according to a new poll which suggests the party would be left with just one MP. If there were an election tomorrow, only former minister Sir John Hayes would cling on to his South Holland and the Deepings seat in Lincolnshire as voters turn their backs on the Conservatives following Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget.

The Redfield and Wilton poll has given Labour the largest lead of any party since October 1997 after Tony Blair swept to power over John Major’s beleaguered government.

According to its findings, Labour are up three – to 56 percent – while the Tories are down four – to 20 percent.

The Electoral Calculus website projects this would leave the Conservatives with just one seat, while Labour would have a majority of 466.

The official Opposition would be the SNP on 52 seats, while the third party would be the Lib Dems on 15 seats.

It means the Tories are facing an electoral catastrophe greater than at any time in its 344-year history as the world’s oldest political party.

The only recent precedent for such a wipeout of a governing party was in 1993 when the Canadian Progressive Conservative Party went from being in government to having just two seats.

Sir John Hayes, one of the last Truss loyalists, currently has a majority 30,838 in his East Anglian seat after picking up 75.9 percent of the vote in the 2019 election.

The veteran minister and influential founder of the Common Sense Group of Tory rightwing MPs would find himself as a de facto leader of the party following a collapse.

The findings come as Tory MPs scramble to force Ms Truss to resign after a disastrous first 41 days since taking over from Boris Johnson.

The collapse in the polls follows a similar drop in the financial markets as the value of stocks and shares plummeted, along with the UK’s credit rating following her disastrous mini-budget.

Ms Truss was tonight meeting the powerful One Nation group on the left of the party in a last-ditch effort to save her Premiership.

MPs are trying to avoid a Tory leadership election and are debating who could take over from Ms Truss.

The current favourite is the new Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, described by several MPs as “the de facto Prime Minister.”

One Tory MP said: “He has no friends but, more importantly, he has no enemies so he would be ideal.”

Mr Hunt this morning tore up the Prime Minister’s policies and mini-budget cancelling almost all her low tax policies and threatening many of her spending commitments.

One Tory MP dubbed the Prime Minister as “Prino Donna – the lady who is Prime Minister in name only.”

Manwhile other alternatives are the popular Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, who reportedly does not want the job, defeated leadership candidate Rishi Sunak and Leader of the House Penny Mordaunt.

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Thousands of party members signed a petition with the Conservative Post demanding “Bring Back Boris” Johnson.

The former Prime Minister is on a speaking tour in the US and is said to be reluctant to return to a job MPs have just forced him out of.

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen, who has publicly called for the Prime Minister to go, said: “This is beyond a joke. We are all going to lose our seats if this continues.”

He pointed out that with the boundary changes “even Sir John Hayes would go” because his seat is broken up.

A former cabinet minister said: “The Prime Minister is gone. It is now when not if.”

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