Opinion: Suffolk's Tory MPs don't face an election wipeout

But some of the excitable headlines from Easter weekend polls seem totally over the top - and when it comes to Suffolk I really cannot see Labour taking four or five seats here!

These polls suggested that Labour would have a majority of something like 250 and that the Tories could be left with less than 100 MPs. To quote Victor Meldrew: I don't believe it!

I do think the Tories could be looking at a defeat on the same scale as 1997 when they won only 165 seats - but then they still won five of the seven Suffolk seats. 

And I don't think Keir Starmer's overall victory will be as high as Tony Blair's because there will be far more SNP MPs after the 2024 election than there were 27 years ago.

Dan Poulter's seat may not be at risk, despite opinion polls saying otherwise (Image: Newsquest)

The weekend pollsters reckoned that Dan Poulter and Therese Coffey would both lose their seats to Labour - and that either Bury St Edmunds or the new cross-county Waveney Valley seat would fall as well. Both put West Suffolk in the Labour camp.

That strikes me as nonsense - in both the Central Suffolk and North Ipswich seat and in Suffolk Coastal there might be growing disenchantment with the Conservative government but there is no consensus on who is the main challenger.

And despite political fantasists going on about tactical voting, there is little chance of that having an impact because opposition parties have very different views on key issues.

Labour came second in both those seats in 2019 despite its disastrous election campaign headed by the most unpopular leader in its history.

But you aren't going to get those who oppose the government because they don't like pylons, electricity converter stations on the Suffolk coast, or the Sizewell C project to vote Labour.

As Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves made clear during her recent to Suffolk, Labour is even keener on new forms of green electricity generation - and the infrastructure needed to get it from East Anglia to the rest of the country - than the Conservatives.

Rachel Reeves recently visited Suffolk (Image: PA)

Equally traditional Labour voters worried about the decline in health and social services in the area are unlikely to abandon their party when it looks set to form the next government.

All this means that Drs Coffey and Poulter should be able to sleep a bit sounder at night knowing that their seats may be saved by a split opposition.

Certainly Labour isn't changing its tactics. When I asked a leading figure in the Ipswich party whether they were switching their attention away from Gainsborough and Chantry to Whitton and Woodbridge he laughed out loud.

It was quite clear that while they would be delighted to win seats they'd never taken before, they'd be quite happy to take Ipswich and Lowestoft which have always been seen as the two Suffolk marginals.

The big question, though, that is facing everyone is when will the next general election be held?

It's clear the Prime Minister and most of his advisers would like to go to the late autumn - October or even November - but poor local election results and a leadership challenge could prompt an earlier poll.

I don't have any more idea than anyone else about when the election will actually be held, but I'm keeping my fingers firmly crossed that Mr Sunak doesn't feel forced to go in late June.

But I'm sure the holiday arrangements of regional journalists will be the last thing on his mind when he does set the date!

The opinions expressed in this column are the personal views of Paul Geater and do not necessarily reflect views held by this newspaper, its sister publications or its owner and publisher Newsquest Media Group Ltd.