Will Sunak survive the worst Conservative Party performance in 40 years?

Analysis from politics expert Dr Steve McCabe

Transcript

00:00 Looking at the worst performance of the Conservative Party in 40 years, this will only increase

00:07 calls for SEMAC to go.

00:09 Well, we remain to see what happens in terms of the mayoral elections and clearly Ben Houchin

00:16 winning T's value.

00:19 That's a bright spot as it were.

00:22 And indeed, it's not all brilliant news for Labour.

00:25 It's good, but quite clearly Labour have lost out in areas where there's a high Muslim voter

00:35 because of course Gaza.

00:36 So, there are issues.

00:37 But yeah, I think the direction of travel in so far as what we've seen so far would

00:42 suggest that Labour are on to win the election.

00:45 But we're talking before the mayoral concerts have been announced, certainly in Manchester,

00:50 which of course Andy Burnham is expected to retain.

00:55 But it depends on the swings.

00:56 And indeed, I saw the results in other places that potentially there could be a lot to hope

01:04 for for both sides.

01:05 So, as I say, the big one certainly in the West Midlands is Andy Street, which won't

01:09 be announced till tomorrow.

01:10 I was also going to say that Ian Dunsmith, I had him being interviewed on the radio,

01:14 and it's amazing how he was spinning it.

01:17 He was not decrying the fact that it's pretty bad news as far as the Conservatives are concerned.

01:22 But they still believe they've got a lot to play for.

01:25 The big question, of course, is that will this be enough for the party to decide they've

01:29 had enough and they need to hit the nuclear button and go for a new leadership or the

01:35 new leader, whoever that may be in the range of candidates that we can talk about?

01:41 Or will they decide, well, we're going to go down, so we might as well wait and see

01:44 what happens.

01:45 And indeed, coming back to, I think, Sonek believes if he's under threat, he may just

01:50 call an election anyway.

01:51 So I think it's all finely balanced.

01:54 But I say so far, so bad for the Conservatives, but it's not quite as bad as it might have

01:59 been.