Labour on course for 200-seat majority and Tories to have fewest MPs ever, new poll shows

Published

1 year ago

June 19, 2024

admin

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.

Election latest: Starmer’s wife says protest outside home made her feel ‘sick’

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.

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.

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.

UK

Diogo Jota: Liverpool players join mourners as Premier League star and his brother Andre Silva buried in Portugal

Published

7 hours ago

July 5, 2025

admin

Diogo Jota: Liverpool players join mourners as Premier League star and his brother Andre Silva buried in Portugal

Liverpool players past and present have joined the family and friends of Diogo Jota and his brother Andre Silva for their funeral in Portugal.

A service was held in the Igreja Matriz de Gondomar church in their hometown of Gondomar near Porto in northern Portugal on Saturday morning.

Mourners lined the streets and some in the crowd clapped as the brothers’ coffins were carried into the church.

The funeral – in pictures

Jota, 28, leaves behind his wife of only 11 days, Rute Cardoso, and three young children.

His younger brother, 25, was an attacking midfielder for Penafiel in the second tier of Portuguese football.

Liverpool manager Arne Slot, captain Virgil Van Dijk and teammates including Andy Robertson, Conor Bradley, Ryan Gravenberch, Cody Gakpo, Curtis Jones, Darwin Nunez and Joe Gomez were seen at the service.

Former teammates Jordan Henderson, James Milner and Fabinho were also there.

Van Dijk carried a red wreath with Jota’s number 20, while Robertson had a wreath featuring number 30, Silva’s number at Penafiel.

Some of Jota’s teammates in the Portuguese national side also attended, including Bruno Fernandes, of Manchester United, Ruben Dias and Bernardo Silva, of Manchester City, Joao Felix and Renato Veiga, of Chelsea, Nelson Semedo, from Wolves, Joao Moutinho and Rui Patricio.

Ruben Neves was one of the pallbearers after flying in from Florida where he played for Al Hilal in the Club World Cup quarter-final on Friday night.

‘More than a friend’

In a post published on Instagram before the service, he told Jota he had been “more than a friend, we’re family, and we won’t stop being that way just because you’ve decided to sign a contract a little further away from us!”

Jota’s fellow Liverpool midfielder, Alexis Mac Allister, said on Instagram: “I can’t believe it. I’ll always remember your smiles, your anger, your intelligence, your camaraderie, and everything that made you a person. It hurts so much; we’ll miss you. Rest in peace, dear Diogo.”

Porto FC president Andre Villas-Boas and Portugal national team manager Roberto Martinez were also in attendance.

‘With us forever’

Speaking after the ceremony, Martinez said the period since their deaths had been “really, really sad days, as you can imagine, but today we showed we are a large, close family.

“Their spirit will be with us forever.”

The service was private, but the words spoken by the Bishop of Porto, Manuel Linda, were broadcast to those standing outside the church.

He told Jota’s children, who were not at the service, that he was praying for them specifically, as well as their mother and grandparents.

“There are no words, but there are feelings,” he said, adding: “We also suffer a lot and we are with you emotionally.”

The brothers died after a Lamborghini they were travelling in burst into flames following a suspected tyre blowout in the early hours of Thursday morning.

No other vehicles are said to have been involved in the incident.

Liverpool have delayed the return of their players for pre-season following Jota’s death and players past and present paid tribute to him and his brother on social media.

Flowers have been left outside Anfield, where flags have been lowered to half-mast and all club shops, museums and tours have been closed until Monday.

UK

Rachel Reeves hints at tax rises in autumn budget after welfare bill U-turn

Published

10 hours ago

July 5, 2025

admin

Rachel Reeves hints at tax rises in autumn budget after welfare bill U-turn

Rachel Reeves has hinted that taxes are likely to be raised this autumn after a major U-turn on the government’s controversial welfare bill.

Sir Keir Starmer’s Universal Credit and Personal Independent Payment Bill passed through the House of Commons on Tuesday after multiple concessions and threats of a major rebellion.

MPs ended up voting for only one part of the plan: a cut to universal credit (UC) sickness benefits for new claimants from £97 a week to £50 from 2026/7.

Initially aimed at saving £5.5bn, it now leaves the government with an estimated £5.5bn black hole – close to breaching Ms Reeves’s fiscal rules set out last year.

In an interview with The Guardian, the chancellor did not rule out tax rises later in the year, saying there were “costs” to watering down the welfare bill.

“I’m not going to [rule out tax rises], because it would be irresponsible for a chancellor to do that,” Ms Reeves told the outlet.

“We took the decisions last year to draw a line under unfunded commitments and economic mismanagement.

“So we’ll never have to do something like that again. But there are costs to what happened.”

Meanwhile, The Times reported that, ahead of the Commons vote on the welfare bill, Ms Reeves told cabinet ministers the decision to offer concessions would mean taxes would have to be raised.

The outlet reported that the chancellor said the tax rises would be smaller than those announced in the 2024 budget, but that she is expected to have to raise tens of billions more.

It comes after Ms Reeves said she was “totally” up to continuing as chancellor after appearing tearful at Prime Minister’s Questions.

Criticising Sir Keir for the U-turns on benefit reform during PMQs, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the chancellor looked “absolutely miserable”, and questioned whether she would remain in post until the next election.

Sir Keir did not explicitly say that she would, and Ms Badenoch interjected to say: “How awful for the chancellor that he couldn’t confirm that she would stay in place.”

In her first comments after the incident, Ms Reeves said she was having a “tough day” before adding: “People saw I was upset, but that was yesterday.

“Today’s a new day and I’m just cracking on with the job.”

Sir Keir also told Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby on Thursday that he “didn’t appreciate” that Ms Reeves was crying in the Commons.

“In PMQs, it is bang, bang, bang,” he said. “That’s what it was yesterday.

“And therefore, I was probably the last to appreciate anything else going on in the chamber, and that’s just a straightforward human explanation, common sense explanation.”

UK

Diogo Jota and Andre Silva’s funeral in pictures

Published

11 hours ago

July 5, 2025

admin

Diogo Jota and Andre Silva's funeral in pictures

The family and friends of Diogo Jota and his brother Andre Silva have been joined by Liverpool stars past and present and other Portuguese players at the pair’s funeral near Porto.

The Liverpool forward, 28, and his brother died in a car crash in Spain on Thursday.

Pictures below show the funeral at the Igreja Matriz de Gondomar church in the town of Gondomar near Porto. Click here for our liveblog coverage of the day’s events.