DESPAIR erupted in the Tory camp today as ministers admitted defeat at a projected Labour landslide.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride told GB News that Labour is heading for an “extraordinary landslide on a scale that has probably never, ever been seen in this country before.”
In a final lap of media interviews before polls open, he told Sky News: “It appears, if the polls are right, that we’re heading towards the largest majority that this country has ever seen, much greater than even 1997’s landslide.”
Asked about Mr Stride’s comments, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer accused the MP of “voter suppression,” and “trying to get people to stay home rather than go out and vote.”
While campaigning in Carmarthenshire, he said: “If you want change you have to vote for it.
“I know there are very close constituencies across the country, I don’t take anything for granted.”
A Survation poll of 34,558 people said it was “99 per cent certain” that Labour will win on a landslide.
It was predicted it would secure over 484 seats — 66 more than the landslide under Tony Blair’s leadership 27 years ago.
The poll found that the Tories could secure as few as 64 seats — the fewest since the party’s founding in 1834.
The Sun branded the party “exhausted” and announced that it is backing Labour for the first time since 2005.
It lauded right-wing Reform’s anti-immigrant hysteria as “striking a chord with millions,” but concluded Nigel Farage’s party was a “one-man band.”
Last week, Channel 4 filmed a Reform canvasser suggesting that asylum-seekers arriving on small boats be shot.
The Guardian reported that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had confided to his inner circle that he fears losing his seat in Richmond, Yorkshire.
If he does, he will be the first sitting prime minister to lose his seat at a general election.
Penning an article in the Telegraph former home secretary Suella Braverman launched a post-mortem and told the Tories to “prepare for the reality and frustration of opposition.”
She blamed the party’s demise on the “failure to unite the right,” and said that it had been “haemorrhaging votes” to Reform.
She concluded its next moves could decide whether the party “continues to exist at all.”
