Around 10 cabinet ministers including Jacob Rees-Mogg, Thérèse Coffey, Jeremy Hunt and Simon Clarke would lose their seats in a general election, according to a poll for the Trades Union Congress (TUC), which also shows voters are opposed to the removal of workers’ rights.
The poll by Opinium, using the MRP method to estimate constituency-level results, projected a 1997-style landslide for Labour, with the party winning 411 seats. It suggested the Conservatives would lose 219 seats to end up on 137, with the Liberal Democrats on 39 seats and SNP on 37. It projected vote share for Labour of 43%, Conservatives 28%, the Lib Dems 13%, Green 7%, SNP 4%.
The survey was carried out with more than 10,000 adults on 26 to 30 September – two weeks before Liz Truss scrapped large parts of her mini-budget and sacked her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng. Multiple polls have worsened further for the government since then.
Among those whose seats were projected to be lost by the Tories were Hunt, the new chancellor, Clarke, the levelling up secretary, Rees-Mogg, the business secretary, Coffey, the health secretary and deputy prime minister, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the transport secretary, Chloe Smith, the work and pensions secretary, Alok Sharma, the Cop26 president, Jake Berry, the Tory party chair, and Robert Buckland, the Wales secretary.
The poll showed the previously safe Surrey seat of Kwasi Kwarteng, who was sacked as chancellor on Friday, was on a knife-edge, with 37% support for the Conservatives compared with 36% for Labour.
Boris Johnson, the former prime minister, is also on course to lose his seat, according to the poll, and the Conservatives would lose all 45 out of 45 so-called red wall seats in the north of England.
The poll also asked voters about their support for EU-derived workers’ rights, such as paid leave and limits on working times, which are under threat from the Conservatives’ legislation scrapping laws and regulations that originated in Brussels.
Overall, 71% of voters support retaining EU-derived workers’ rights such as holiday pay, safe limits on working times and rest breaks. They received overwhelming backing even in the seats of Rees-Mogg, with 72% backing, and Liz Truss, with 63% backing.
The business secretary had presented a plan to abolish laws including the 48-hour working time directive but this was sent back to the drawing board by Truss over fears it went too far, and the policy is currently being reconsidered.
The TUC, which commissioned the poll before its annual congress, warned the government it would face a significant voter backlash if it followed through on plans to rip up key workplace protections which originated from EU law.
The retained EU law bill, soon due for second reading in the Commons, will automatically scrap a swathe of worker protections at the end of 2023, unless ministers choose to retain them.
Before its congress this week, which was moved from September because of the death of the Queen, the TUC said the Conservatives had shown they were “firmly on the side of bad bosses” and were “the P&O party” – a reference to the ferry company that sacked its workers without notice or consultation.
Frances O’Grady, the general secretary of the organisation covering 48 trade unions representing 5.5 million workers, said: “Vital workplace protections – like holiday pay, safe limits on working hours and equal pay for women – are all at risk.
“Not content with throwing the economy into turmoil, ministers now seem determined to turn the clock back on rights in the workplace. This polling is a clear repudiation of Tory attacks on workers’ rights and their slash-and-burn economics … Voters will punish [Truss] if she proceeds with these reckless plans – she must stop the chaos and ditch this damaging bill.”
Chris Curtis, the head of political polling at Opinium, said Truss had seen a backlash from voters that was more like a “nightmare than a honeymoon”.
“But elections aren’t just about national polls so our model, built on interviews with over 10,000 voters, analyses how this would play out in each of Great Britain’s 632 constituencies. The results are stark, showing that, if there were an election any time soon, a 1997-sized Labour landslide would be the most likely outcome,” he said.
“One of the main causes of the Tory poll flop is that the mini-budget is convincing voters that the party is on the side of the wealthy rather than working people. If the government want any chance of avoiding a once-in-a-generation wipeout at the next election then they need to turn this reputation around.”
