Martin Baxter, founder of the Electoral Calculus website, made the prediction. Election Calculus has been widely praised for the accuracy of its elections forecasts. During the local elections the Conservatives lost 1,334 councillors, whilst the Labour opposition shredded 82.

Writing in The Daily Telegraph Mr Baxter claimed the local election results, if replicated on a national scale, would “put the Conservatives and Labour level at 28 percent support with the Liberal Democrats on 19 percent”.

Combining this with estimates form the Brexit Party and Change UK, which did not stand at the local elections, the top pollster estimated big Conservative losses at a general election.

He said: “Putting that together indicates that Theresa May’s Conservatives would just be ahead of Labour and would be predicted to win 279 seats in the House of Commons, with Labour on 270, the SNP winning 55 seats and the Lib Dems with 22.

“That would make for a hung parliament, with a Labour/SNP alliance as the foundation for a possible majority government.”

However general elections, during which people tend to vote on national issues, do not necessarily produce the same result as local elections.

Furthermore no local elections were held in Scotland or Wales, making it harder to apply the results across the whole UK.

Mr Baxter noted: “It’s a famous maxim among poll-watchers that local elections are an unreliable guide to future general elections.

“Local elections are unlike Westminster elections, and even less like European elections.

“Although some people may have voted for Brexit-related reasons, many others may simply have answered the question on the ballot paper and chosen their preferred local representative to provide their local government.”

Mr Baxter added this result would be better than recent national polling, which puts Labour on 32 percent and the Conservative on 25 percent.

This would put “Jeremy Corbyn on course to be Prime Minister with Labour winning 320 seats, just six seats short of an absolute majority.

“The Conservatives would lose about 90 seats to keep just 229 seats”.

Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP are fiercely opposed to Brexit, meaning they could demand a second EU membership referendum as part of any coalition deal.

They also want to break up the UK by taking Scotland out of the British union.

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