Nightmare on Downing Street: what could happen on Friday 13th?

Radicalism does not usually work out well for the Labour party. Michael Foot fought the 1983 general election on a hard-left manifesto famously dubbed ‘the longest suicide note in history’ and saw his party’s worst result since the first world war. But as next week’s general election approaches, despite running on an even more sweepingly statist programme, Labour is rising in the polls. The most left-wing government in British history is now a real possibility.

On the face of it, this makes no sense. Why, after the chaos of the last hung parliament, would voters choose another one? The prospect of Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister, propped up by the Liberal Democrats, the SNP or both — plotting second referendums on Brexit and Scottish independence — is too traumatic to contemplate. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen. When was the last time that a major election delivered the expected result?

An important shift in this painful, somewhat surreal election campaign is that while the Tories have already successfully squeezed the Brexit party’s vote, Labour could still take lots more support from the flailing Liberal Democrats. Jo Swinson’s ‘Revoke’ policy, of cancelling Brexit without even a second referendum, boosted the Lib Dems when the Tories seemed to be heading for a ‘No Deal’ exit. But after Johnson secured a Brexit deal, ‘Revoke’ looked extreme. Labour’s Brexit stance — renegotiation, then referendum — now strikes many Remainers as the more plausible position.

A recent YouGov ‘super-poll’ predicted a healthy 68-seat Tory majority, based on ‘bottom-up’ constituency-level analysis and a huge 100,000-strong voter sample. But in no fewer than 30 constituencies, the YouGov polling fine print showed the Conservatives winning by less than 5 per cent. Losing just a sliver of support could switch enough seats to knock more than 40 off the Tory majority. A few more near misses, a clear danger with so many three- and four-way constituency battles in the offing, and the Tories would be clinging on to power by a couple of seats.