Perhaps the most shocking thing about the latest YouGov MRP polling is how little of a shock it seems. The survey, which maps the voting intention of nearly 20,000 voters onto constituency-level trends, is projecting a worse result for the Conservatives than in 1997. Yet this, which would have seemed absurd five years ago, is now the consensus, with an increasing sense that there is little the party can do to change it.

The scale of the defeat forecast here is huge. The Conservatives would not have a single MP in London. A smattering of prominent Tories would be unseated, from leadership hopeful Penny Mordaunt to old-guard mainstays such as Iain Duncan Smith. The party would be thoroughly evicted from the Red Wall and would hold fewer than 10 seats between the Humber and the Scottish border. Across the South, the Lib Dems would pick off a bunch of quintessentially Tory areas, winning nearly 50 seats and compounding the demise.

The polling also shows the danger Reform UK poses to the Tories. While the insurgent party is still unlikely to win any seats, it is set to come second in 36 of them including a handful of Tory 2019 gains such as Bolsover and Lee Anderson’s Ashfield. More concerning for Conservative planners, however, are the seats that Reform could cost them. Richard Tice is keen to take the fight to the Tories, and the prospect of Nigel Farage’s return lingers, but even on current trends a split in the Right could be hugely beneficial for Labour.

Across the country, there are just over 300 seats where Labour’s projected total is less than the combined predicted share for the Tories and Reform. It is oversimplifying to suggest that all of those could come back to the Conservatives, but there are 20 seats where picking up just half of the Reform votes could grant the Tories victory: the likes of South Basildon, Harlow and Stoke. This could be a face-saving difference between returning to Westminster with a 1997-style result or something more like Labour’s 2010 performance. With a bit of a bounce, it might even nudge towards a hung parliament.

The problem for the Tories is how to achieve it. Policy shifts towards the Right have already failed to move the electoral dial. Tightening immigration rules and pushing through the Rwanda bill have, so far, yielded little. Neither has tax cuts. Overall, the Tory Party has failed to find an answer to the Reform insurgency. It is unclear what rolls of the die they have left, or even if they know how to court these voters.

The other option is a chance for a pact with Reform. The Tories rejected a similar ploy in 2019 but Farage, who was Brexit Party leader at the time, unilaterally decided to stand down candidates in Conservative-held seats. It probably helped Boris Johnson secure victory, but those were very different circumstances. The Conservatives have little to offer now: they will not be in government, so have few policy giveaways to make. Reform’s calculation is different, too. Playing too strongly in 2019 could have handed victory to an anti-Brexit coalition, but now some members of its high command sense the chance to replace the Tory Party.

Overall, pre-election pacts are rare in British politics and there seems little chance of this one. The Conservatives have too many other interests to balance – with votes lost to the Left as damaging to those seeping away on the Right. Reform, for its part, would much rather eat up the Right than soften the blow for the Conservatives. The pattern from the polling looks set to hold. The most realistic alternative is perhaps based on local pacts in seats such as Stafford or Worthing, where Reform is likely to be a distant third but still cost the Conservatives.

There are perhaps six months or more to the election. That time will be filled with frequent talk about what, if anything, the Tories can do. The numbers, however, are now showing a consistent picture: a huge defeat is now the least surprising result.

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John Oxley is a corporate strategist and political commentator. His Substack is Joxley Writes.

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