Top polling expert Sir John Curtice has just delivered his predictions of how the Tories will fare in this coming Friday’s local elections, and it’s bad news for Kemi Badenoch. Speaking on the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg show this morning, Sir John outlined what is at stake this week.

He said that British politics is now “fragmenting before our very eyes”, as five parties scrap to win seats. Sir John pointed to the most recent polls, with Reform UK now topping all other rivals on about 25% support. By contrast Labour has slumped massively since their win last year, down to just 24%, with Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives on 22%.

However, the Greens and LibDems are also spiking in popularity, on 9% and 14% respectively.

He explained that this year’s council seats were last fought in 2021, when Boris Johnson was riding high in the polls largely thanks to the ‘vaccine bounce’.

As a result Mr Johnson’s Tories swept the board, picking up Hartlepool in a stunning by-election win and even causing Sir Keir Starmer to consider resigning.

Set against this, Ms Badenoch is on course for a terrible result.

Sir John explained: “Four years ago, when Thursday’s seats were last contested, the Conservatives were on 42%, six points ahead of Labour, and gained over 200 council seats.”

“Reform barely registered. Now the Tories are defending nearly 1,000 of the 1,641 seats up for grabs.

“Heavy losses, perhaps as many as half their seats, seem inevitable.”

Laura Kuenssberg reacted to his prediction about the Tories’ likely doom, describing it as “not a pretty picture”.

Turning to her Cabinet guest, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Pat McFadden, she pointed out that Labour should be doing better than they are.

The BBC star set out: “If you look back to the last time Labour had a massive landslide, the year after they did that the Blair government gained councils. And David Cameron also gained councils in 2011 after he came into power.”

Asked what’s gone so wrong for Sir Keir’s Labour Party, Mr McFadden insisted he would not predict the results of the election.

The close ally of the Prime Minister argued: “We’ve had a lot of stuff to sort out over the past year. We inherited a difficult situation, we’ve been taking the decisions to do that.”

“Some of those have not been popular, I accept that, but I think we’re beginning to see something of a turnaround at the moment…

“These are early signs, I don’t pretend they’ve changed everything, but they’re movement in the right direction and people are not yet feeling the full effect of that. But if we keep going and we can go faster than we’ve done in the last year then I think we can build on that.”