Labour forecast to win landslide of over 400 seats, as YouGov poll predicts Tory wipeout at election
Labour could be swept into power with a landslide of more than 400 seats at the next general election, according to the latest YouGov mega poll.
The survey of 18,000 people predicts Sir Keir Starmer’s party will win a parliamentary majority of 154 – almost double what the Conservatives achieved with Boris Johnson in 2019.
The poll forecasts Labour will win 403 seats, a gain of 201, while the Tories will crash to just 155 seats – a loss of 210.
Follow live: The big Tory names forecast to lose their seats
If correct, the result would be a worse defeat for the Conservatives than under Sir John Major in 1997, when the rise of Sir Tony Blair‘s New Labour left them with just 165 MPs.
Key Conservatives projected to lose their seats include Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, cabinet ministers Grant Shapps and Penny Mordaunt and former party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith.
A loss for Ms Mordaunt would be particularly embarrassing as she has been already a two-time contender for the party leadership, and has been touted as a potential successor to Rishi Sunak.
Other cabinet ministers set to lose their seats include Transport Secretary Mark Harper, Justice Secretary Alex Chalk, Science Secretary Michelle Donelan and Wales Secretary David TC Davies.
There is also bad news for the SNP, which is forecast to lose 29 seats, with most of them going to Labour.
That would mean Labour once again becoming the largest party in Scotland, having been virtually wiped out north of the border in 2015.
Meanwhile the Liberal Democrats, who are targeting Conservative heartlands in southern England, are forecast to gain 38 seats, giving them 49 in total.
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‘We’re ready – just call an election’
This includes in Mr Hunt’s new Godalming and Ash constituency (formerly South West Surrey), where he has a majority of 8,817 votes.
The poll was conducted by YouGov between 7 and 27 March, and it used a multi-level regression and post-stratification (MRP) process to model constituency-level results.
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It is generally considered one of the most accurate forms of polling due to the number of interviews conducted, which enables pollsters to examine voting intentions in very small geographical areas.
It is the latest in a series of disastrous polls for the Conservative Party ahead of a general election expected in the second half of this year.
Tory MP Brendan Clarke-Smith, who is projected to lose his seat to Labour, posted on X that the polling model is “clearly flawed and fails to factor in my infectious charm and charisma”.
Politicians are often sceptical about opinion polls, and many of YouGov’s predictions will no doubt by queried by MPs and party officials in the coming days.
Despite a double-digit lead in the polls for some time now, Sir Keir Starmer has imposed an iron discipline on his shadow cabinet about the danger of complacency.
While some pundits predict the next election will be a repeat of the party’s 1997 landslide victory, there are fears within Labour of a 1992 false dawn – when Neil Kinnock lost what was believed to be an “unlosable” election.
The 154-seat Labour majority in the new poll is edging towards the 179-seat majority won by Tony Blair in 1997, though well short of a 254-seat majority suggested in another MRP-style poll in mid-February.
If Labour were to win the next election, it would bring an end to 14 years of Conservative government under five prime ministers.
Tulip Siddiq has told Sky News her “lawyers are ready” to handle any formal questions about allegations she is involved in corruption in Bangladesh.
Asked whether she regrets apparent links with the Bangladeshi Awami League political party, Ms Siddiq said “why don’t you look at my legal letter and see if I have any questions to answer… [the Bangladeshi authorities] have not once contacted me and I’m waiting to hear from them”.
The London MP resigned as a Treasury minister in January after being named in several corruption inquiries in Bangladesh.
In her first public comments since leaving government, Ms Siddiq said “there’s been allegations for months on end and no one has contacted me”.
Last month, the interim leader of Bangladesh told Sky News the MP had “wealth left behind” in the country “and should be made responsible”.
Lawyers acting for Ms Siddiq wrote to the Bangladeshi Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) several weeks ago saying the allegations were “false and vexatious”.
The letter said the ACC must put questions to Ms Siddiq “by no later than 25 March 2025” or “we shall presume that there are no legitimate questions to answer”.
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Staff from the NCA visited Bangladesh as part of initial work to support the interim government in the country.
In a post online today, the former minister said the deadline had expired and the authorities had not replied.
Sky News has approached the Bangladeshi government for comment.
The allegations against Ms Siddiq are focused on links to her aunt Sheikh Hasina – who served as the prime minister of Bangladesh for 20 years.
Ms Hasina was forced to flee the country in August following weeks of deadly protests.
She is accused of becoming an autocrat, with politically-motivated arrests, extra-judicial killings and other abuses allegedly happening on her watch. Hasina claims it’s all a political witch hunt.
Electrocuted on their genitals and mouths sewn up: Inside Bangladesh’s ‘death squad’ jails
Ms Siddiq was found to have lived in several London properties that had links back to the Awami League political party that her aunt still leads.
She referred herself to the prime minister’s standards adviser Sir Laurie Magnus who said he had “not identified evidence of improprieties” but added it was “regrettable” Ms Siddiq had not been more alert to the “potential reputational risks” of the ties to her aunt.
Ms Siddiq said continuing in her role would be “a distraction” for the government but insisted she had done nothing wrong.
Cryptocurrency exchange OKX reportedly hired former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to advise it over the federal probe that resulted in the firm pleading guilty to several violations and agreeing to pay $505 million in fines and penalties.
Cuomo, a New York-registered attorney, advised OKX on legal issues stemming from the probe sometime after August 2021 when he resigned as New York overnor, Bloomberg reported on April 2, citing people familiar with the matter.
“He spoke with company executives regularly and counseled them on how to respond to the criminal investigation,” Bloomberg said.
The Seychelles-based firm pled guilty to operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business in violation of US Anti-Money Laundering laws on Feb. 24 and agreed to pay $84 million worth of penalties while forfeiting $421 million worth of fees earned from mostly institutional clients.
The breaches occurred from 2018 to 2024 despite OKX having an official policy preventing US persons from transacting on its crypto exchange since 2017, the Department of Justice noted at the time.
A spokesperson for Cuomo, Rich Azzopardi, told Bloomberg that Cuomo has been providing private legal services representing individuals and corporations on a variety of matters since resigning as New York governor.
“He has not represented clients before a New York city or state agency and routinely recommends former colleagues for positions,” Azzopardi added.
OKX reportedly wasn’t willing to comment on its relationships with outside firms.
Cuomo also influenced OKX to make executive appointments: Bloomberg
Cuomo, who is now running for mayor of New York City, also advised OKX to appoint his friend US Attorney Linda Lacewell to OKX’s board of directors, Bloomberg said.
Lacewell, a former superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services, was added to the board in 2024 and was named OKX’s new chief legal officer on April 1, according to a recent company statement.
Source: Linda Lacewell
Related: New York bill aims to protect crypto investors from memecoin rug pulls
After the investigation concluded, OKX said it would seek out a compliance consultant to remedy the issues stemming from the federal probe and bolster its regulatory compliance program.
“Our vision is to make OKX the gold standard of global compliance at scale across different markets and their respective regulatory bodies,” OKX CEO Star Xu said in a Feb. 24 X post.
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United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing reciprocal tariffs on trading partners and a 10% baseline tariff on all imports from all countries.
The reciprocal levies on will be approximately half of what trading partners charge for US imports, Trump said. For example, China currently has a tariff of 67% on US imports, so US reciprocal tariffs on Chinese goods will be 34%. Trump also announced a standard 25% tariff on all automobile imports.
Trump told the media that tariffs would return the country to economic prosperity seen in previous centuries:
“From 1789 to 1913, we were a tariff-backed nation. The United States was proportionately the wealthiest it has ever been. So wealthy, in fact, that in the 1880s, they established a commission to decide what they were going to do with the vast sums of money they were collecting.”
“Then, in 1913, for reasons unknown to mankind, they established the income tax so that citizens, rather than foreign countries, would start paying,” Trump said.
Full breakdown of reciprocal tariffs by country. Source: Cointelegraph
Trump presented the tariffs through the lens of economic protectionism and hinted at returning to the economic policies of the 19th century by using them to replace the income tax.
Related: Bitcoin rally to $88.5K obliterates bears as spot volumes soar — Will a tariff war stop the party?
Trump proposes eliminating federal income tax and replacing it with tariff revenue
Trump proposed the idea of abolishing the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and funding the federal government exclusively through trade tariffs while still on the campaign trail in October 2024.
According to accounting automation company Dancing Numbers, Trump’s plan could save each American taxpayer $134,809-$325,561 in taxes throughout their lives.
US President Donald Trump addresses the media about reciprocal trade tariffs at the April 2 press event. Source: Fox 4 Dallas
The higher range of the tax savings estimate will only occur if other wage-based taxes are eliminated at the state and municipal levels.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who assumed office in February, also voiced support for replacing the IRS with the “External Revenue Service.”
Lutnick said that the US government cannot balance a budget yet consistently demands more from its citizens every year. Tariffs will also protect American workers and strengthen the US economy, he said.
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