THERESA MAY RESIGNS BUT PROBABLE SUCCESSOR COULD LOSE SEAT AT NEXT ELECTION

Finally Theresa May has listened to the nice men in white coats, and will soon be taken far away from 10 Downing Street to a peaceful place in the country with high walls and lots of sedatives.

But the hell for the Conservative Party may just be beginning, with political scientists predicting that the next leader could lose his or her seat in the next General Election, leaving the Party headless once again.

Professor Matthew Goodwin from the University of Kent has run statistical models looking at the impact of Nigel Farage's new Brexit Party on the Conservative Party's prospects. 

According to the models, if the Brexit Party wins 30% of the vote at the next General Election, the Conservative Party would suffer "devastating losses" of around 113 seats, including many of its top MPs. Even if the Brexit Party gets just 15% of the vote, the Conservatives would still lose as many as 67 seats. The Brexit Party was polling at 37% before the European Parliamentary elections held yesterday.

At present the Conservative Party has 313 deeply divided members in the 650-seat House of Commons.

The findings by Professor Goodwin mean that many top Tories, like Boris Johnson, now the bookies' favourite to be the next leader and PM, would almost certainly lose their seats in Parliament due to their majorities being relatively narrow. 

Johnson, in the last election for his constituency of Uxbridge and South Ruislip, scored 23,716 votes to the 18,682 votes of his Labour Party opponent -- a majority of 5,034. Professor Goodwin predicts that a strong showing by the Brexit Party would take away enough votes from Johnson to allow Labour to win the constituency, throwing Johnson out of a job.

The Conservative Party's main threat is thus not from Labour but from the Brexit Party. In fact this is an existential threat that could destroy the Party. 

The only way the Conservatives can escape this danger is to virtually become the Brexit Party itself, and push for a "No Deal" Brexit harder than its rival. 

But the problem for the Tories is that many of their MPs are still living in the past, and won't realise that they can't afford the luxury of squabbling about Europe until it is too late.

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