Black Wednesday-style Tory collapse could trigger a Labour landslide, says top pollster

The Tories’ poll collapse is quicker than Black Wednesday - and there is a “risk history will repeat itself” with a Labour landslide, Britain’s most respected pollster said tonight.

Prof Sir John Curtice warned there has been a 7% swing from the Tories to Labour in the last week, adding: “Actually within a week of Black Wednesday the swing was only half that.

“So we have already seen a swing against the government on the scale we found after Black Wednesday in the wake of a month, in the course of a week”.

Sir John said the polls could be “exaggerated” by Labour conference but added: “Whatever the merits of Liz Truss ’s package, it has resulted in very serious electoral damage done to the Conservative Party as an institution and to its new leader.”

And asked what Labour’s current 23-point average lead would mean in an election, he told a fringe event hosted by the Demos think tank: “It’s a Labour overall majority in three figures. This is not difficult.

“But always at this stage one says it’s two years to go and all the rest of it.”

Asked what Labour’s current 23-point average lead would mean in an election, Sir John said: “It’s a Labour overall majority in three figures. This is not difficult. But always at this stage one says it’s two years to go and all the rest of it" (PA Archive/PA Images)

Sir John said it was “possible but not inevitable” that the Budget chaos of the last week will “seared on voters’ memories” so hard the Tories cannot recover.

Audience members at the Tory conference said “wow” and “shocking” after he exposed the depth of the swing to Labour.

Sir John said a steady Tory lead “began to unravel” with the Owen Paterson sleaze affair and the party has then “never recovered” from Partygate.

With new leaders, “99 times out of 100 their advent results in a bounce” but Liz Truss’s did not, perhaps partly due to the timing of the Queen’s death, Sir John said.

Labour leader Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria (ADAM VAUGHAN/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)

She “needed to start on the front foot - and of course the very opposite has happened”, he said.

He said after Black Wednesday the Conservatives fell behind in the opinion polls and “never, ever recovered thereafter - even though the economy recovered very well after 1992.

“The question therefore is whether or not the events of the last few weeks, and particularly the market reaction, will leave an imprint on voters’ mind that’s analogous to that of Black Wednesday.

“In which case, frankly this government will have a very substantial challenge indeed to be able to win another election.”