A Tory peer has appeared to confirm that new rules on voter ID are designed to suppress anti-Conservative support.
Lord Cruddas - a close ally of Boris Johnson - said Labour would scrap the controversial policy if it wins the next general election.
He said that would be one of several ways of “making it impossible for the Conservative Party to win an outright majority in the future”.
Ministers have insisted that the changes, which were introduced at the local elections in England earlier this month, were necessary to prevent voter fraud.
That is despite the Electoral Commission saying that voter impersonation is not a major problem in the UK.
Critics have accused the Tories of trying to make it harder for supporters of other parties to register vote - something vehemently denied by the government.
In their initial report on the local elections, the Electoral Commission confirmed that the new rules had “regrettably” prevented some people from voting.
They said that the requirement to carry photo identification “posed a greater challenge for some groups in society”.
Meanwhile, analysis of figures provided by local councils confirms that thousands of voters were turned away from polling stations for not having the correct identification, and that hundreds of them never returned.