Conservatives 'may be in trouble' at general election if they don't elect a Remainer as leader, polling expert says

Eurosceptic would struggle to win support from young people, women and ethnic minorities, politics professor says

The Conservatives "may be in trouble" at a general election if they elect a hard Brexiteer as their next leader, an polling expert has said.

Rosie Campbell, a professor of politics at King's College London​, said the Tories' lack of support among younger voters would be "exacerbated by a hard Brexiteer prime minister" and that such a candidate would also struggle to win votes among female and ethnic minorities voters.

It comes after Chris Grayling, the transport secretary, suggested the Conservatives' next leader was likely to be "someone who campaigned for Brexit" and should be a minister with "the experience and resilience to get us through the immediate future".

But writing for The Independent, Professor Campbell said: "We’ve seen over the past weeks and months how important a stable majority in the House of Commons is, yet if May is ousted before the withdrawal agreement is passed, a new leader who is more committed to Brexit at any cost is unlikely to fare much better in uniting the House and overcoming the legislative logjam.

"If May somehow gets her deal through and then voluntarily steps aside for a new leader, there are no guarantees that the leadership drama will end there. That will only have been phase one of the Brexit negotiations; the second phase is likely to be far trickier and take far longer to navigate. A general election to break another, currently unforeseen impasse in the process is therefore plausible.

"If that leader does then go to the country, they may be in trouble. Analysis of the 2017 general election shows that the Conservatives under May had a problem with several rather large constituencies of voters, namely younger people (and we can be quite loose with the term “young” here), ethnic minorities and women."

She added: "David Cameron’s failure to secure a majority in 2010 might have led party members to believe they should have stuck to their guns and resisted his calls for modernisation. But to secure a stable majority the Conservatives need to take more of the centre ground – moderate Remainers as well as moderate Brexiteers.

"A strategy that focuses on a hard Brexit approach from the right of the party won’t win the coalition of voters from diverse communities, across the sexes and generations that is needed to govern."

Professor Campbell suggested that a hardline Eurosceptic would struggle to win support among young people, saying: "The party’s contemporary problem with younger voters would most likely be exacerbated by a hard Brexiteer prime minister – according to political scientist John Curtice, the stark age difference in the referendum vote itself is even greater now than it was in 2016."

They would also fail to attract support from women and ethnic minority voters, she claimed, pointing out that 76 per cent of non-white voters backed Labour at the 2017 general election, while just 17 per cent voted for the Conservatives.

She said: "A new, more eurosceptic Conservative leader would also be a failure of strategy if the party wants to win more support among black and ethnic minority voters. And if the Conservatives want to remain a party of government, this is a section of the electorate that they can ill afford to ignore."

Professor Campbell said a Eurosceptic Tory leader might help attract some male voters from Ukip but risked alienated "even more women voters", who she said "are less likely to be fervently anti-European".

Ms May has promised to step down if MPs approve her Brexit deal, which has been rejected by the Commons on three occasions. It is widely expected that the overwhelmingly anti-EU Tory membership will elect a successor who is more Eurosceptic than the current prime minister.