{"id":53043,"date":"2026-05-31T17:14:32","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T17:14:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/53043\/"},"modified":"2026-05-31T17:14:32","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T17:14:32","slug":"tory-humiliated-by-makerfield-poll-placing-conservatives-last","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/53043\/","title":{"rendered":"Tory Humiliated By Makerfield Poll Placing Conservatives Last"},"content":{"rendered":"

A senior Conservative<\/a> was left red-faced on Sunday when presented with the results of an opinion poll of the Makerfield<\/a> voters.<\/p>\n

Sky News <\/a>presenter Trevor Phillips<\/a> showed shadow home secretary Chris Philp<\/a> the findings from a Survation<\/a> survey of 369 people set to vote in the crunch by-election.<\/p>\n

The graph showed put the Conservatives in last place on 2% in the constituency.<\/p>\n

The Green Party were just in front on 3%, the Liberal Democrats on 4%, Restore Britain on 7%, Reform UK on 40% and Labour in the lead on 43%.<\/p>\n

Phillips said: \u201cBefore 2024, you used to come second between 20 and 30% of the vote.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow there are three parties that could describe themselves as being of the right, or centre right, and you \u2013 you\u2019re the official opposition \u2013 you\u2019re the least popular of the three!<\/p>\n

\u201cReform, Restore, Conservatives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pointing to the graph, he said: \u201cLook, there are the Tories, down there at the bottom. What the heck happened?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"SkySky News’ graph of the Survation opinion poll<\/p>\n

The Tory MP replied: \u201cBy-elections are very strange things. You\u2019ve got this weird dynamic where Andy Burnham is running as a Labour candidate to basically kick out Keir Starmer.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cSo this by-election is idiosyncratic, it\u2019s incredibly unusual.\u201d<\/p>\n

Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham<\/a> is hoping to win the Makerfield seat so he can challenge the prime minister\u2019s leadership.<\/p>\n

Phillips said: \u201cBut people of the right aren\u2019t going to you. They\u2019re going to Reform, they\u2019re going to Restore, which is a party almost nobody has even heard of.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are polling better than you are! What has happened to the Tories?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s just see what the actual result says,\u201d Philp replied, claiming this was \u201cjust one little poll in one constituency in very unusual circumstances\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cIf you take the [national] polls as a whole, we\u2019re often in second place, Kemi is rated as the best leader and you can see that we\u2019re the only party holding the failing Labour Party to account.\u201d<\/p>\n

Philp also noted that it takes time to \u201crebuild trust\u201d with the public following their unpopular 14-year stint in government.<\/p>\n

Subscribe to Commons People<\/a>, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week\u2019s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what\u2019s going on at Westminster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A senior Conservative was left red-faced on Sunday when presented with the results of an opinion poll of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[9175,3724,20231,5,6],"class_list":["post-53043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uk","tag-chris-philp","tag-conservative-party","tag-makerfield","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116670317699088721","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}