Centrist MPs who defected from Labour and Tories all set to lose seats, major poll predicts

Independents struggling to win back their old seats, according to YouGov model which predicted the 2017 result

Prominent centrist MPs who defected from Labour and the Conservatives are on course to lose their seats in the general election, according to new research by pollsters which accurately predicted the 2017 result.

Constituency estimates by YouGov indicate that if the election was held on Thursday, Boris Johnson would secure a 68-seat majority in the party's best performance since 1987, while Labour could be face a 52-seat slump, and the Liberal Democrats could gain just one MP.

Candidates who quit their parties to stand as independents or for the Lib Dems will struggle to pick up seats, with a number of well-known faces under threat at the ballot box.

Labour MPs who joined the Lib Dems are struggling, with Chuka Umunna 13 points behind in Cities of London and Westminster, Luciana Berger 18 points back in Finchley and Golders Green, and Angela Smith trailing by 33 points in Altrincham and Sale West.

Former Tory Sam Gyimah is second in Kensington but he is still lagging eight points behind his old party, the research published in The Times found.

The other fellow Conservatives Sarah Wollaston, Phillip Lee and Antoinette Sandbach are all also lagging behind Tory candidates.

The research also found three candidates from the Independent Group for Change look set to lose their seats to the parties they defected from earlier this year.

Pro-EU MP Anna Soubry remains in third in Broxtowe, while Gavin Shuker, who is standing as an independent candidate in Luton South, is trailing Labour by some distance.

Chris Leslie, a former minister under Tony Blair, is expected to lose Nottingham East to his old party.

Former Conservatives are also feeling the squeeze, as ex-cabinet minister David Gauke looks set to lose his former seat of South West Hertfordshire.

Dominic Grieve, the former attorney general, is a long way off winning the safe Tory seat of Beaconsfield but the pollster said he held the highest vote share of ex-Tories with 28 per cent.

Veteran MP Frank Field, who has held Birkenhead for Labour since 1979, is also on course to lose his seat after quitting Jeremy Corbyn's party last year.

Local factors could still be at play in these seats, the pollster said, as the modelling uses aggregated data which may not pick up on specific localised issues.

YouGov said: "If these factors are significant enough to influence how people vote, they may be understated in our model.

"This is particularly important when looking at independent candidates as they are not comparable to other candidates and parties."

For the last seven days YouGov has interviewed approximately 100,000 panellists about their voting intentions in the 2019 General Election.