Labour are on course for a majority of 200 according to a new YouGov projection, which also suggests the Tories will slump to their lowest number of seats at an election since the party’s formation in 1834.
If this projection is replicated when the country goes to the polls on 4 July, Labour would have the second largest majority since the Second World War.
This is the second of three polling projections of this election campaign by YouGov, which Sky News has partnered with for the election. It uses a modelling technique known as MRP.
The latest poll suggests Labour are on course for a majority that is six seats larger than their initial projection on 3 June, which suggested a majority of 194.
If this and other MRP polls are accurate, it suggests Britain is on the cusp of a fundamental redrawing of the political landscape.
The projection suggests Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives would plummet to 108 seats – down from the 365 won by Boris Johnson in the 2019 election.
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This would break all historical records, putting the Tories well below their previous low of 141 seats in 1906 under Arthur Balfour.
It puts Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour on course for a commanding 425 seats, more than double the 202 seats won in the 2019 election and beats all previous records for Labour since the party was founded at the start of the last century.
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Sir Tony Blair won a peak of 418 seats in 1997.
The Liberal Democrats would win 67 seats under this projection, a huge six times the number of seats they won in 2019.
This would be the highest number since the formation of the Lib Dems, a record previously set in 2005 when Charles Kennedy was leader.
Meanwhile, John Swinney’s SNP are projected to drop to 20 seats under this projection, down from the 48 won by Nicola Sturgeon in the last general election.
Nigel Farage’s Reform party is on course for five seats, the Greens on two seats and Plaid Cymru on four seats.
Since 3 June, when the last YouGov MRP was published, the pollster has changed its calls in 59 seats.
The Tories have dropped 32 seats since, Labour has gained three seats in this projection, while the Lib Dems are up 19, SNP up three and Plaid up two.
Reform wins five seats under the new projection, having previously been on course to win none according to YouGov. This includes Mr Farage winning his seat in Clacton.
Big name losses projected
The MRP poll also means big name losers on election night.
Some 15 of 27 cabinet members still standing in the election are set to lose, according to this projection.
The new cabinet casualties are Victoria Atkins, the health secretary, Lucy Frazer, the culture secretary, Richard Holden, the Conservative Party chair and Michael Tomlinson, who attends cabinet as an immigration minister.
This adds to Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, Grant Shapps, the defence secretary and Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the Commons.
Some 29 of the 45 ministers running in this election are projected to lose, including Steve Baker, the Northern Ireland minister, Chris Philp, the crime minister, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the foreign office minister and Greg Hands, the trade minister.
Other notable Tory casualties include Robert Jenrick in Newark and Caroline Nokes in Romsey and Southampton North.
One Labour shadow cabinet member, Thangam Debbonaire, is still set to lose her Bristol West seat to the Greens.
What is an MRP poll?
You might come across the term MRP quite a lot in the coming weeks as we head towards the general election on 4 July.
An MRP poll – which stands for multilevel regression and post-stratification – is a type of poll that gets pundits excited because it draws from large amounts of data, including a large sample size and additional information like locations.
MRP polls first ask a large representative sample of people how they will vote. They then use that information of how different groups say they will vote combined with information about the sorts of people who live in different constituencies. This allows the pollster to estimate how people will vote in each constituency across the country – even when they may have surveyed just a few people, or even none, in some places.
This can then be broken down into smaller groups to see how voters in different areas say they plan to vote. Rather than making more generalised assumptions that everyone behaves the same way in different constituencies, it takes into account the fact that every constituency is its own race and local issues and trends may be at play.
What MRP can’t do is account for very specific local factors – such as a hospital or large employer closing down in a constituency, or a scandal relating to a particular candidate.
It still involves a lot of assumptions and estimates – and some races are too close to call with any level of certainty. It also only gives a snapshot of people’s opinions, and a lot can change over the course of an election campaign. However, it does give us a more nuanced idea about what the general election result could be than other more generic polls.
Some 109 seats are still listed as a “tossup”.
If all tossup and close races in every seat where Conservatives are second went in their favour, rather than in the direction assumed in this poll, then Labour would still have a majority of 132. The Conservatives in that scenario would win 153 seats – still their lowest on record and far below what Labour won in 2019 under Jeremy Corbyn.
The projection vote shares, implied by this MRP, are Labour on 39%, the Tories on 22%, Reform on 15%, Lib Dems on 12% and Greens on 7%.
This means the Labour majority and seat tally have both gone up, even though Labour’s implied vote share is down three points since the start of June. The big winners are Reform, up from 10% to 15% and the Lib Dems, up from 11% to 12%.
The polling for the projection was conducted from last Tuesday until this Tuesday with 39,979 people interviewed online: 36,161 in England and Wales and 3,818 in Scotland.
It suggests the Conservatives would be a party predominantly of the south east, south west and east of England. The party risks an all or near wipe out in the north east, in Wales and the north west.
Steve Barton is angry, and he has every right to be.
The 68-year-old retired engineer stares at his medical notes that, he says, expose in black and white the moment his life changed forever.
“I have somehow missed… due to my mistake,” a doctor writes in one of the notes, after it became apparent that Mr Barton had not been urgently referred to specialists over what later became an aggressive form of throat cancer.
Steve now has a prosthetic voice box and is one of many British patients fighting medical negligence claims after being misdiagnosed.
NHS officials in Scotland are dealing with thousands of cases annually. Meanwhile, Westminster’s Public Affairs Committee (PAC) recently disclosed England’s Department of Health and Social Care has set aside £58.2bn to settle clinical lawsuits arising before 2024.
Mr Barton, who lives in Alloa near Stirling, repeatedly contacted his doctors after he began struggling with his breathing, speaking and swallowing. His concerns were recorded by the NHS as sinus issues.
As panic grew and his voice became weaker, Mr Barton paid to see a private consultant who revealed the devastating news that a massive tumour had grown on his larynx and required part of his throat to be removed immediately.
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“I am angry, I am upset, I don’t want anyone else to go through this,” Mr Barton told Sky News.
“There were at least four, possibly five, conversations on the phone. He [the doctor] said to me that it sounds like I’ve got reflux.”
‘He was palmed off’
Mr Barton is now unable to work and cannot shower by himself because if water enters the hole in his neck, he could drown.
And a windy day can cause a debilitating coughing fit if a gust catches his prosthetic voice box.
Image: Steve Barton is one of thousands battling medical negligence cases
Asked if he believes this was avoidable, Mr Barton replied: “Absolutely. 100%.”
His wife, Heather, told Sky News: “He hates this. You see him crying. It breaks my heart. It’s been hard emotionally.”
She added: “Everybody knows their own body. He was palmed off and the consequence is a neck dissection. It [life] changed overnight.”
Legal battle over compensation
The Barton family have been locked in a legal battle over their ordeal with the Medical and Dental Defence Union Scotland (MDDUS) – a body which indemnifies GPs.
It has not admitted formal liability in this case but has agreed to settle financial compensation to Mr Barton.
Izabela Wosiak, a solicitor from Irwin Mitchell who represents the Bartons, said: “Cases like Steve’s are complex and usually quite difficult, but solicitors have accepted there was no defence to this case.
“They have arranged to make an interim payment; however we are still in the process of negotiating final settlement.”
A MDDUS spokeswoman refused to comment while talks are being finalised.
What is the scale of medical negligence in Britain?
The NHS in Scotland is under the devolved control of the Scottish government.
Figures suggest there were almost 14,000 clinical negligence claims and incidents in 2023/24, an increase on the previous year.
It comes as PAC warned that the total liabilities in England’s health service has hit £58.2bn.
PAC chair Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP told Sky News: “I extend my sympathies to Steve and his family. Unfortunately, he is not alone.
“Some are really heart-wrenching tales. Every single claim somebody is involved, someone has been in some way injured, so this is a terrible thing.
“We are going to be working on how we can make the whole system less litigious and get compensation paid out quickly because if the state does harm to somebody, the least they could do is to compensate them as quickly as possible.”
Paul Whiteing, the chief executive of patient safety charity Action Against Medical Accidents, told Sky News: “The NHS itself last year [in England] paid out just over £5bn in compensational set aside money for compensation that it would need to pay out.
“It’s a huge cost and of course that doesn’t speak to the cost to every individual, every family, every person who is impacted by the consequences of some form of medical accident and the trauma that can go with that.”
It is “shameful” that black boys growing up in London are “far more likely” to die than white boys, Metropolitan Police chief Sir Mark Rowley has told Sky News.
In a wide-ranging interview with Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, the commissioner saidthat relations with minority communities are “difficult for us”, while also speaking about the state of the justice system and the size of the police force.
Sir Mark, who came out of retirement to become head of the UK’s largest police force in 2022, said: “We can’t pretend otherwise that we’ve got a history between policing and black communities where policing has got a lot wrong.
“And we get a lot more right today, but we do still make mistakes. That’s not in doubt. I’m being as relentless in that as it can be.”
He said the “vast majority” of the force are “good people”.
However, he added: “But that legacy, combined with the tragedy that some of this crime falls most heavily in black communities, that creates a real problem because the legacy creates concern.”
Sir Mark, who also leads the UK’s counter-terrorism policing, said black boys growing up in London “are far more likely to be dead by the time they’re 18” than white boys.
“That’s, I think, shameful for the city,” he admitted.
“The challenge for us is, as we reach in to tackle those issues, that confrontation that comes from that reaching in, whether it’s stop and search on the streets or the sort of operations you seek.
“The danger is that’s landing in an environment with less trust.
“And that makes it even harder. But the people who win out of that [are] all of the criminals.”
Image: Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley
The commissioner added: “I’m so determined to find a way to get past this because if policing in black communities can find a way to confront these issues, together we can give black boys growing up in London equal life chances to white boys, which is not what we’re seeing at the moment.
“And it’s not simply about policing, is it?”
Sir Mark said: “I think black boys are several times more likely to be excluded from school, for example, than white boys.
“And there are multiple issues layered on top of each other that feed into disproportionality.”
‘We’re stretched, but there’s hope and determination’
Sir Mark said the Met is a “stretched service” but people who call 999 can expect an officer to attend.
“If you are in the middle of the crisis and something awful is happening and you dial 999, officers will get there really quickly,” Sir Mark said.
“I don’t pretend we’re not a stretched service.
“We are smaller than I think we ought to be, but I don’t want to give a sort of message of a lack of hope or a lack of determination.”
“I’ve seen the mayor and the home secretary fighting hard for police resourcing,” he added.
“It’s not what I’d want it to be, but it’s better than it might be without their efforts.”
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0:39
How police tracked and chased suspected phone thief
‘Close to broken’ justice system ‘frustrating’ and ‘stressed’
Sir Mark said the criminal justice system was “close to broken” and can be “frustrating” for others.
“The thing that is frustrating is that the system – and no system can be perfect – but when the system hasn’t managed to turn that person’s life around and get them on the straight and narrow, and it just becomes a revolving door,” he said.
“When that happens, of course that’s frustrating for officers.
“So the more successful prisons and probation can be in terms of getting people onto a law-abiding life from the path they’re on, the better.
“But that is a real challenge. I mean, we’re talking just after Sir Brian Leveson put his report out about the close-to-broken criminal justice system.
“And it’s absolutely vital that those repairs and reforms that he’s talking about happen really quickly, because the system is now so stressed.”
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She pinned the primary blame for the Met’s culture on its past leadership and found stop and search and the use of force against black people was excessive.
At the time, Sir Mark, who had been commissioner for six months when the report was published, said he would not use the labels of institutionally racist, institutionally misogynistic and institutionally homophobic, which Baroness Casey insisted the Met deserved.
However, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who helped hire Sir Mark – and could fire him – made it clear the commissioner agreed with Baroness Casey’s verdict.
A few months after the report, Sir Mark launched a two-year £366m plan to overhaul the Met, including increased emphasis on neighbourhood policing to rebuild public trust and plans to recruit 500 more community support officers and an extra 565 people to work with teams investigating domestic violence, sexual offences and child sexual abuse and exploitation.
Watch the full interview on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips from 8.30am on Sunday.
More than 70 people have been arrested at protests against Palestine Action being designated a proscribed terrorist group.
Protesters gathered for the second week in a row in central London, where the Metropolitan Police made 42 arrests.
Other demonstrations took place around the UK, including in Manchester, where police said 16 arrests were made, in Cardiff, where South Wales Police arrested 13 people, and in Leeds, where West Yorkshire Police made one arrest.
In London, two groups of protesters gathered underneath statues of Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela in Parliament Square, shortly before 1pm.
They wrote the message “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action” on pieces of cardboard and silently held the signs in the air as they were surrounded by police officers and members of the media.
Image: Police officers remove a person. Pic: PA
Image: Police with demonstrators in Parliament Square. Pic: PA
Some demonstrators could be seen lying on top of each other on the floor as police searched their bags, and took their ID cards and signs.
Officers then carried away a number of protesters, lifting them off the ground and into waiting police vans.
The last protester was lifted from the Nelson Mandela statue shortly after 2.30pm.
Forty-one of the 42 arrests at the London protest were for showing support for a proscribed organisation, while one person was arrested for common assault, the Met Police said.
Image: People take part in a protest in Parliament Square, London. Pic: PA
Palestine Action’s terror group designation means membership of, or support for, the group is a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison.
Greater Manchester Police said it had arrested 16 people under the Terrorism Act 2000 after responding to a protest in St Peter’s Square at around 2.30pm.
Image: Police lead a protester away in Manchester
South Wales Police confirmed 13 people were arrested on suspicion of offences under the same act in the vicinity of Central Square in Cardiff.
West Yorkshire Police said a person was arrested in Leeds on suspicion of demonstrating support for Palestine Action.
Scotland Yard has said its stance remains that officers will act where criminal offences, including support of proscribed groups or organisations, are committed.
It added that this includes “chanting, wearing clothing or displaying articles such as flags, signs or logos”.
The move to ban Palestine Action came after two aircraft were damaged at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire last month.
Police said the incident caused around £7m worth of damage.