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Rishi Sunak will this week confront Conservative rightwingers who want to toughen up his Rwanda asylum bill, as a new “mega poll” suggested his party could be heading for a 1997-style election wipeout.
The prime minister is under pressure from dozens of Tory MPs, including senior members of his government, to accept amendments intended to ensure that deportation flights to Rwanda can start before an election.
But Sunak warned last month that even tightening the bill by “an inch” could lead to Rwanda pulling out of the scheme: Kigali has insisted that the plan must comply fully with international law.
Tory divisions over the Rwanda scheme have added to gloom in the party over its election prospects with a new YouGov survey of 14,000 people suggesting Labour could win a 120-seat majority if a poll was held today.
The poll, commissioned by Tory donors and overseen by rightwing former Brexit minister Lord David Frost, suggests the main opposition party would win 385 seats compared with 169 for the Tories.
Frost, writing in the Daily Telegraph, suggested the poll — which uses so-called MRP modelling to break down results by constituency — urged Sunak to get tough on immigration and end the focus on net zero.
He said the poll showed that the rightwing Reform UK party posed a real threat to the Conservatives in marginal seats, which could be even greater if Nigel Farage delivered on his hints and returned to politics.
“Two or three extra points for Reform, a bit more tactical voting, and this might start to look like an extinction event,” he wrote.
On Monday Isaac Levido, the Tory election campaign chief, will present his analysis of polling to Conservative MPs. He is expected to warn that the party faces a hammering unless internal feuding ends.
The YouGov poll confirms the scale of the task Sunak faces: it suggests the Conservatives would win 196 fewer seats than in 2019, compared with the 178 losses incurred by Sir John Major’s Tories in 1997.
Levido will tell Tory MPs that many voters are undecided and have not warmed to Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, but will warn that Tory infighting will prove fatal to the party’s chances.
More than 50 Tory MPs have so far backed amendments to the Rwanda bill intended to severely limit the ability of individuals to appeal against their deportation and to disapply international law to stop the European Court of Human Rights blocking flights.
Lee Anderson, deputy chair of the Conservative party, has told party whips he could back the amendments, while business secretary Kemi Badenoch has also privately urged Sunak to toughen the bill.
Although Sunak will hope to find some concessions to rightwing Tory MPs to give them a ladder to climb down, he believes the bill is already as tough as it can be while staying within the constraints of international law.
“It is the only approach because going any further, that difference is an inch, but going any further means that Rwanda will collapse the scheme and then we will have nowhere to send anyone to,” he said last month.
The prime minister should easily defeat the rightwing amendments: Labour officials confirmed on Monday that the opposition party would also vote against them, guaranteeing a big government majority.
Voting on amendments will take place on Tuesday and Wednesday, with a crucial third reading on the bill expected on Wednesday.
Again, Sunak should win that vote: Conservative officials expect most Tory MPs would shy away from killing the bill, even if it was not as tough as they would have liked.
But the impression of Tory disunity on such a crucial issue will be highly damaging to Sunak and fuel claims by Reform UK that Sunak cannot be trusted to take tough action on immigration.