Rishi Sunak clashes with Keir Starmer at PMQs over the NHS
According to recent polls the Conservatives are set to lose more than 300 seats at the next election unless Rishi Sunak turns things around.
But, however bad the polls get, the prediction website Electoral Calculus keeps projecting that the Conservatives will make a single gain.
So even if they fall below 100 seats in Parliament and easily do worse than their two previous biggest distaters in 1906 (156 seats) and 1997 (165 seats), the party is set to win one seat it did not hold before.
The last two weekly Techne UK polls both suggest that things could be so bad for the Conservatives that Rishi Sunak would be the first Prime Minister in British history to lose his seat in a general election.
But, according to the number crunching, Harriet Cross, the Tory candidate for Gordon and Banff will be victorious and gain her party a seat even on a historically disastrous night.
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Who is Harriet Cross?
Harriet Cross is not a professional politician who has been parachuted into a winnable seat but soneone who has had a normal career which is part of her community in Aberdeenshire.
The 32-year-old grew up in Ireland and moved to the north east of Scotland in her teens before going to Imperial College London to study zoology and later Reading University to do a masters in rural land and business management.
She now works as a chartered rural surveyor in Aberdeenshire living with hr partner Tom and their black labrador Mia (who features in a lot of her election literature).
Cross is focussed on local campaigns such as upgrading local roads the A96 and A90 as well as reopening a local hospital in Insch.
But, crucially, she is backing more drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea, something which the SNP now opposes but supports scores of jobs in the constituency she hopes to win.
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Why can Harriet Cross defy the odds?
The simple answer is: The SNP.
A combination of Humza Yousaf’s leadership ineptness and the allegations surrounding his predecessor Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP has had a dramatic loss in support.
The poll of polls used by Electoral Calculus suggests that the SNP will lose 27 of their 48 Westminster seats leaving them with 21 in Scotland.
Among those is the seat of Gordon, soon to become Gordon and Banff in the boundary changes, which Ms Cross is fighting as the Conservative candidate.
The seat was previously held and lost by Alex Salmond when he was still in the SNP and now it looks like it will become Conservative again, even on a historically abysmal night for Mr Sunak’s party.
A former Scottish Secretary explains…
David Mundell has been on the frontline of Scottish politics since he was elected to the Scottish Parliament in its first election in 1999.
As an MP for 18 years and former Scottish Secretary for four years, Mundell has seen the fortunes of politics in Scotland shift dramatically in almost a quarter of a century.
For a long time he was Scotland’s only Tory MP but now he beleives that even in a wipeout for his party at UK level then Ms Cross’s potential gain is very much on the cards.
He said: “You can take nothing for granted but what we are potentially looking at with the next election is a ‘change election’.
“If that transpires then change is an alternative to us in England but we may not be effected in Scotland where ‘change’ means ‘change from the SNP’.”
He added: “I could see us winning that seat [Gordon and Banff] even in those circumstances. It is looking good at the moment.”
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