A HUNG parliament is “the best Labour can hope for” from a UK General Election, polling expert Professor John Curtice has said.
Curtice, who is the president of the British Polling Council, said that a Westminster election would likely see Keir Starmer have to strike a deal with either the SNP or the LibDems in order to put himself in Downing Street.
Starmer has repeatedly ruled out a deal with the SNP in an attempt to shore up his party's Unionist credentials, meaning the LibDems may be his only real option.
Labour face an uphill battle in attempting to win back seats from the Tories in the so-called “Red Wall” as well as taking seats from the SNP in Scotland, Curtice said.
“The truth is, being the largest party in a hung Parliament is pretty much the best [that Starmer] can hope for,” the professor went on.
“And then he faces the question: will he do a deal with the Liberal Democrats and the SNP, both of which will present him with some very fundamental choices …
“But at the end of the day, history suggests that when people get faced with a choice between becoming prime minister and losing their position as leader of their party, they tend to make the former choice.”
Labour's relative success in recent polls has been widely ascribed more to the Conservatives' failures than to their own successes.
Curtice was speaking to former Northern Ireland first minister Arlene Foster on GB News when he made the comments.
He also addressed the partygate scandal engulfing Boris Johnson, saying that the beleaguered Prime Minister might not be out of the woods yet.
“Well, he’s survived Partygate so far but of course it’s not over,” Curtice said.
“Not least because the Committee on Standards and Privileges is now investigating the statements the Prime Minister made in the House of Commons when on a number of occasions about partygate – suggesting initially there’re weren’t any parties and that he'd been assured that all the regulations had been adhered to, both statements of which are now open to debate …
“Partygate itself is not over. I think in truth if the committee on privileges were to suggest that the Prime Minister had been less than straightforward in the House of Commons, but that might in the end be enough to turn around enough Conservative MPs.”
Johnson survived a no-confidence vote on Monday by 211 votes to 148. The loss of the support of 41% of his MPs was seen as a crushing blow, but Johnson claimed it was a “decisive” victory and vowed to continue on.
