You can read more from our political reporter Faye Brown here:įive Conservative-run councils launched legal action back in February over the extension of London's ultra-low emission zone (ULEZ), which is due to come into force on 29 August. The 42-year-old lives in a building in Romford, Essex, with the same type of ACM cladding blamed on the rapid spread of the deadly fire at Grenfell Tower in 2017, which killed 72 people.īecause the building is less than 11 metres in height, it does not qualify for government funding. It has been billed by the government as the "biggest intervention on building safety to date" and aims to protect leaseholders from the expensive costs of remediating their properties that have emerged since the Grenfell Tower disaster.īut Lisa Petty, who is facing a £21,000 bill, told Sky News the announcement will "have absolutely no bearing on my situation". The long-awaited Cladding Safety Scheme (CSS) opened this week and will provide £5bn to fix medium-rise tower blocks with flammable external walls, in cases where the developer cannot be traced. One Tory MP suggests this discrepancy is a result of the boundary changes that will be in place from the next election: "There's quite a lot of people whose seats have been wrecked by the boundary changes that may try and find somewhere else to fight, or not at all," he said.įlat owners caught up in the cladding crisis say they will remain trapped in unsellable homes despite a major new scheme to help fund repairs. This is in contrast to the 14 Labour MPs stepping down, who have an average age of 70, and the eight SNP MPs who are aren't seeking re-election with an average age of 57. The average age of the 44 Conservative MPs currently standing down is 55, with just under one-third below the age of 50. "I think the rapid succession of changes in regime means there are quite a lot of colleagues who feel that things have moved on from them," he said.Īnother Tory MP who is not seeking re-election said that whilst they're relieved the "chaos" of the last 18 months is over, a large number of MPs have "had enough" with politics and are "tired". One senior Conservative MP who is standing down told Sky News the "rapid succession of changes" is why he thinks so many of his colleagues are not seeking re-election: "It's been a pretty intense decade in politics, there's been a lot that's happened with the coalition, Brexit, and then COVID, as well as an awful lot of prime ministers. Sky News' live polling tracker shows that on average, the Conservatives are currently 18 points behind Labour in the polls, so trying to prevent a 1997-style result for the Tories will prove to be a challenge. However, in the run-up to the 1997 election, not only were the Conservatives in government during a time of economic uncertainty, they were also facing significant boundary changes - a situation similar to one the Tories are currently facing. With approximately 61% of all the MPs standing down at the next election being Conservative, this is just below the 1997 election figure, where 64% of the total number of MPs who didn't seek re-election were Tory. More recently, Boris Johnson's snap election in 2019 resulted in 41 Tory MPs standing down before the vote, however nine of them were expelled from the party three months before after rebelling against the government in a Brexit vote. In 1997, 75 Tory MPs stood down ahead of the general election which gave Labour the biggest parliamentary majority on record with 179 MPs, and ended the Conservatives' 18-year spell in power.Ī total of 22 Tory MPs stood down in 2001, 16 in 2005, and 35 in 2010. The data also shows more than three times the number of Conservative MPs are stepping aside compared to the 2017 election, and this number is likely to grow with the next election not expected to be held until autumn next year. So far, 44 Tory MPs have said they won't stand for re-election, which data from the House of Commons Library shows is more than any other election since Labour's landslide victory in 1997. More Conservative MPs have announced they are standing down at the next general election than at any poll since 1997.
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