May Victory Might Trigger Questions From Own Party, Hutton Says

(Bloomberg) -- British voters head to the polls in a week. After the Scottish independence referendum, a general election and the Brexit plebiscite, this is now the fourth time in as many years. Voter fatigue may be setting in, but the U.K.'s path out of the European Union is at stake as Prime Minister Theresa May and her Conservative Party seek to stave off a late charge by the opposition Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn. Bloomberg government reporter Robert Hutton and editor Eddie Buckle assess the race as the lead May had at the start of the campaign has narrowed.

Q: Can May “win” this election from here? Isn't any likely majority she might get (say 75 or less) going to be seen by her own party as a huge miss? Where would that leave her ability to dictate to her party?

A (Hutton): This is a really interesting question: What counts as a win? Most prime ministers would have been perfectly happy to take a 75-seat majority, but May's fallen down here on expectations management. Her poll lead was so wide at the start of the campaign, that there was an expectation she'd get a majority well north of 100. Having had some big missteps in the last month, if she now turns up with a majority of 75, a lot of her MPs will be asking why she hasn't done better.

A (Buckle): A 75-seat majority is actually a pretty comfortable win under normal circumstances. It's equivalent to a 12-point lead in the polls. But the Tories were 20 points ahead when she called the election.

Q: What has gone wrong for Theresa May? She called this election when polls promised her a landslide with a 20 percentage point poll lead. What happened?

A (Buckle): In a way, it's less that the Tory vote has collapsed -- it's still around 45 percent -- than that Corbyn has enjoyed a remarkable turnaround in his fortunes. Labour has pushed up from 25 percent or so to close to 40 percent, and Corbyn's won round a skeptical public to an extent. He's generally cut a better figure than May in TV appearances.

Q: How likely is it that we get no clear result from the election, and the prospect of a Labour-led coalition becomes possible?

A (Buckle): Labour needs to be about level pegging in terms of vote share with the Tories to achieve a situation where they might have some form of a parliamentary majority with parties like the Scottish National Party and the Liberal Democrats. They're about 3 points short of that at the moment on the most favorable polls.

Q: If there's one constituency to watch on election night to get an early idea of the final result, which is it?

A (Hutton): It's not quite early, but I'm keen on Moray, in the North of Scotland. That's expected at around 3 a.m. It's interesting because it's held by Angus Robertson, the leader of the Scottish National Party in the U.K. Parliament. It had the highest vote for Brexit in Scotland, and the Tories think they might be able to take it.

You can read the full transcript of the TOPLive Q&A blog here.

To contact the reporter on this story: Eric Coleman in London at ecoleman4@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tal Barak Harif at tbarak@bloomberg.net, Emma Ross-Thomas