An Electoral Nuke Could Be Heading Straight For UK’s Conservative Party

Conservative and right-leaning parties appear to be headed for a substantial loss in the United Kingdom’s parliamentary elections on Thursday.

Two major parties — the left-wing Labour Party led by Keir Starmer and the Conservative Party led by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak — and a handful of other parties are set to face off in the U.K.’s snap elections on Thursday to determine the makeup of Parliament and the next prime minister. But polling suggests that the Labour Party is set to surge to the top and trounce the Conservative Party, ousting Sunak from his role and pushing the right wing out of power, according to multiple sources.

“It’s obviously been extremely difficult,” Steve Baker, a Conservative lawmaker in the U.K., told The Wall Street Journal.

A YouGov MRP poll on Wednesday predicts that Starmer’s Labour Party will win 431 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons, over 100 more than is needed to seize the absolute majority in the chamber, according to CBS News. Sunak’s Conservative Party is expected to win only 102 seats, representing a 233-seat loss from what it currently retains, according to the poll.

Conservative voters could cast their ballots for the right-wing reform party, led by Nigel Farage, instead, but this may be in vain as the party is expected to only win 6 seats in the elections on Thursday, according to the poll. Farage has long been a figurehead among right-wing circles in the U.K. and said he wants to seize control of the Conservative Party after the election, according to the WSJ.