What is Rishi Sunak’s majority and if he might lose his seat on the election

Rishi Sunak could potentially lose his seat at the General Election if the Tories succumb an ‘extinction-level’ defeat.

According to seat forecasts using data from a recent poll, his party could crash out with just 37 seats after the election. A Deltapoll survey this week put Labour on 46% and the Tories way behind on just 21%.

If these figures were replicated across all constituencies, Mr Sunak would be on course to lose his own seat of Richmond and Northallerton. It would be a rare and historic political shock in his ‘ultra-safe’ North Yorkshire seat, where under the previous boundary he currently enjoys a majority of 27,000.

The seat as it is named currently, Richmond, has been solidly Conservative since January 1910, and it would require a very heavy defeat for them to lose it. The Tories’ previous worst ever General Election result came in 1906, when they ended up with just 156 seats. It was also the last and only time a former Prime Minister lost his seat in a General Election, as Arthur Balfour was booted out of his Manchester East constituency. The Tory PM had quit the top job just a month earlier.

But no Prime Minister has ever lost their seat while in office. This is because party leaders are usually chosen from very safe seats, and tend to enjoy increased support at the ballot box among local people, owing to their status.

What happens if Rishi Sunak loses his seat in the General Election?

If Rishi Sunak lost his seat at the General Election, he’d be expected to swiftly resign as leader of the Conservative party – but he wouldn’t technically be required to. The Conservative Party constitution states that the leader should be “drawn from those elected to Parliament”, but does not say explicitly that a leader who is no longer an MP must resign.

Assuming that he did resign after losing his seat, a new Conservative Leader of the Opposition would be chosen following an internal party election. In the meantime, the party would need to find a temporary leader of the party to lead them in the Commons. This would likely be the Sunak’s current deputy, Oliver Dowden, assuming he kept his seat.

In the very unlikely event that the Conservatives won the election but Rishi Sunak lost his seat, there are are also very few rules as to what he has to do next. The Cabinet Manual, an official government document which sets out rules and procedures for the operation of government, does say that the Prime Minister “always sits in the House of Commons“, and this has been convention since the early 20th century. Many Prime Ministers in previous centuries however were drawn from the House of Lords. It is therefore constitutionally possible that Sunak would continue in the post as caretaker through a quick appointment in the Lords while a Tory leadership election was held to find his successor in the Commons.