Iain Dale and Zac Goldsmith may be switching sides. Is the country next?

Who’d truly want to be part of this Tory government? There’s a record-breaking 7.6 million people waiting for treatment in the NHS, a 60% chance of recession by the end of 2024 and, according to data from IPSOS, Labour have screeched 17 points ahead in polling from July. Equally, who’d want to vote for them? By the looks of a recent outburst, not broadcaster and former Tory candidate Iain Dale.

On Wednesday, Dale spoke to LBC listeners in response to the revelation from Conservative peer and Boris Johnson ally Zac Goldsmith that he was “very tempted” to support Labour at the next election. Goldsmith resigned from Rishi Sunak’s government in June over its position – or rather lack of – on climate change. It’s a bandwagon Dale appeared keep to hop on.

“I can’t endorse a party that endorses Lee Anderson telling migrants to ‘F*** off back to France’. If it was just him saying it as a backbencher, I wouldn’t approve of it. I would just think, ‘Well, that’s just him mouthing off for publicity. But the fact that No.10 and the secretary of state for Justice have supported it, I find absolutely despicable,” he told listeners referring to Anderson’s unsavoury comments about the conditions on the Bibby Stockholm, the barge used by the government to house asylum seekers.

Dale added: “Now, I may receive calls over the next few months to change my mind, but I’m reaching a point where it’s just one thing after another, and they don’t deserve to be in government.”

Dale and Goldsmith are not alone. Last October, Max Hastings, Boris Johnson’s former boss at The Telegraph, told Andrew Marr on LBC that: “Our country does seem in the eyes of the world increasingly ridiculous. Americans and Europeans don’t hate us, they look at us in disbelief. The right is now running Britain, it’s a terrifying sight…” Three years prior to this, Hastings had penned a piece for The Guardian accusing Johnson of being “utterly unfit to be prime minister”.

If Tory supporters are fleeing the sinking ship, is Keir Starmer meeting them halfway? The Labour leader is finding himself in increasingly hot water over abandoning the left-wing pledges that won him the party’s leadership in 2020. Starmer has since swapped the policies for more right-leaning ones, raising questions over what exactly his vision for Britain looks like. With the same IPSOS data set revealing that 3 out of 4 Brits believe Britain is becoming a worse place to live, an answer to this is appearing increasingly urgent.

The curtain may be lifted on that mystery. Polling for Channel 4 News shows that Labour is on course for a landslide victory, winning around 460 seats. If this plays out it will be intriguing to see how long Dale and Goldsmith’s applause lasts.