Kay Burley delivered a brutal election reality check to James Cleverly as she told him: “You’re going to get battered.”
The Sky News presenter was speaking after a YouGov poll for the channel showed Labour is on course for a landslide victory on July 4.
It suggested the Conservatives would be left with just 140 seats, while Labour would be on 420 - giving them a majority of 194.
A whole host of big-name Tories would also lose their seats, including a raft of cabinet minister.
Asked for his reaction this morning, Cleverly said: “I know it’s a cliche, but we are focusing exclusively on the one poll that really matters, which is the one on July 4.
“If you’re asking would I prefer going into the last few weeks of this election campaign with the polls in our favour, of course I would prefer that.
“But the fact of the matter is, when I knock on doors what I’m hearing is people completely unconvinced by Labour. That means we have got a job to do making sure that we get our case across that Keir Starmer has spectacularly failed to convince the voters that I speak to that he has a plan for this country.”
Cleverly claimed the Labour leader “doesn’t have control of his shadow cabinet”, but Burley said: “You talk about cabinets, but Jeremy Hunt, Grant Shapps, Penny Mordaunt, Mark Harper, Alex Chalk, Mel Stride, Johnny Mercer, Esther McVey, Simon Hart, Victoria Prentis, David Davies, Gillian Keegan, Jacob Rees-Mogg would all lose their seats if this poll comes to pass.
“You’re going to get battered, according to this.”
The home secretary said: “The whole point of the election campaigns is you make your case to the British people, and when I’ve spoken to people they want to hear what our plan is for the future.”
Later in the interview, Burley told Cleverly: “You’re quite grumpy today, have you been rattled by that poll?”
But he denied it and went on to accuse the Labour leader of “flip-flopping” over Diane Abbott, defence spending and immigration controls.