Tories on election 'war footing' for a possible spring election... despite the party being even less popular now than it was under Liz Truss

The Tory chairman has put the party on a 'war footing' for a possible spring election - even as polls reveal it is less popular with voters now than during Liz Truss's disastrous premiership.

Richard Holden insisted that victory 'is really within our grasp' as he said voters would come to see that Rishi Sunak is on their side, compared with 'slippery' Sir Keir Starmer.

But, before a crackdown was announced by Home Secretary James Cleverly yesterday, pollsters JL Partners said the rise of Nigel Farage-backed Reform UK has hit the Tories hard with 15 per cent of their 2019 voters switching to the new Right-wing party due to dismay over immigration.

Another 18 per cent of 2019 Tory voters have gone over to Labour, likely to include a number of former Labour voters who were alienated by its lurch to the Left under Jeremy Corbyn.

Support has continued to drift away from the Conservatives even after Mr Sunak's speech to the party conference at the start of October in which he promised a reset.

James Johnson, the founder of JL Partners, told Bloomberg: 'Rishi Sunak can count on some undecided voters to narrow the Labour lead, and the British public is hardly elated by the prospect of a Labour government.

'That's where the good news for the Tories stops: They are in dire straits.'

But Mr Holden yesterday insisted 'nothing is impossible'.

'This is the oldest political party in the world,' he told the Express. 'We have to be ready for whatever the Prime Minister wants to go for the election in the new year.'

He added: 'Britain is doing pretty well while Labour still wants to talk us down.

'We're in a much better place now and we need to just concentrate on what unites us.'

However his positive message risked being overshadowed by a series of dire new surveys.

Analysis of polls carried out over the past 18 months has found that just 59 per cent of voters who backed the Conservatives at the 2019 general election - when Boris Johnson won a landslide - are sticking with the party under Mr Sunak.

It represents a sharp fall from the 74 per cent recorded in August 2022 after Mr Johnson announced his resignation and even from 63 per cent in the aftermath of Ms Truss's doomed 'mini-Budget' the following month.

A separate poll by BMG Research for the i paper provided more evidence that the Conservatives face a growing threat from Reform.

Labour's lead extended to 16 points with the opposition on 43 per cent compared with 27 for the governing party, in a survey of 1,502 adults carried out online last week.

And Reform came third with 11 per cent, its best-ever performance in a BMG survey, ahead of the Liberal Democrats on 10 per cent.

Pollsters believe widespread public concern over record high immigration is fuelling support for the upstart party.

BMG's Robert Struthers said: 'All this is fuelling support for Reform UK, who have broken into double digits for the first time in our poll tracker. Just over a year ago, they were in the low single digits, but Sunak now faces a serious challenge on his right flank.

'Strikingly, almost one in five who voted Conservative in 2019 say they now intend to vote Reform, up from just one in ten in October.'

There was further grim news for Mr Sunak in the latest league table of Cabinet members' popularity based on ratings by party members for grassroots website Conservative Home.

The PM sunk to the bottom of the table with his lowest level on record - minus 25.4.