The Conservative Party is set to secure a big 68-seat majority at the General Election as it wins seats in Labour’s heartlands, an influential YouGov poll has forecast.
The constituency-by-constituency estimate suggests the Labour Party could win just 211 seats, which would be the party’s worst performance in terms of seats won since 1983.
Why isn’t this question being posed by Labour spokespeople? The question is weirdly absent from Labour’s campaign. Amongst the shopping list of promises, the latest of which was a £58 billion handout to WASPI women, it seems attacking the Tories isn’t high on the campaign agenda.
This is doubly weird as there are ample opportunities to do so. An independent report by the Resolution Foundation think tank this week calculated that child poverty risks rising to a record 60-year high under a Conservative Government because their manifesto retains the Coalition’s benefit cuts.
Elections are, or at least should be, about a choice for the country, but the danger for Labour is that this election is turning into a referendum on whether they can be trusted to govern. The key word really is trust. As things stand, the more the party promises, the more incredible it sounds; there must be a catch to all this free stuff, say voters.
Corbyn was mauled on the BBC by Andrew Neil. Another Labour low this week was the unequivocal message from the Chief Rabbi urging people not to elect a Labour Government. “The very soul of our nation is at stake”, he warned, arguing that that Jeremy Corbyn’s failure to tackle anti-Semitism within Labour should bar him from leading the country.
I sense a nervousness in the Labour Party so expect a change of course from an offensive campaign designed to win seats to a defensive campaign to hold seats.
Is it all over? Not quite. There are around 67 seats on the YouGov MRP where Labour and the Conservatives are within 5 points of each other. Two weeks to go.