Dementia tax row boosts Corbyn in polls
BRITAIN: Prime Minister Theresa May’s poll lead has fallen to five points a fortnight before the general election – the smallest margin over Labour since she came to power last July.
A YouGov poll puts Labour on 38 per cent of the vote, up three points since the end of last week and the party’s best performance since Jeremy Corbyn became leader in September 2015.
The Conservatives are down one point to 43 per cent, the Liberal Democrats up one point to 10 per cent and Ukip up one to 4 per cent. If the swing is replicated in every constituency, May would lose seats and the Conservatives would have an overall majority of two, down from 17.
The Tory lead over Labour, down from nine points at the end of last week, is their smallest since April last year when David Cameron was prime minister at the height of his party’s infighting over the European Union referendum.
When May called a snap election last month the Tories had a 24-point advantage.
Labour are enjoying their highest level of support since October 2014, under Ed Miliband.
The shift comes after a hostile reception to manifesto proposals forcing elderly people who need care at home to pay a potentially unlimited sum from their estate.
After four days of pressure, May changed the policy on Monday and announced a cap.
The drop in Tory support appears to have come before the Manchester bomb.
At the start of the election campaign May had personal approval ratings of 10 per cent.
They dropped into negative territory for the first time on Monday, reaching minus 7 per cent, before returning to plus 1 per cent in yesterday’s poll.
Corbyn’s ratings began on minus 42 per cent and peaked on Monday at minus 11 per cent, dropping to minus 16 per cent yesterday.
The parties are almost neck and neck in terms of how favourably they are regarded, with Labour on minus 8 per cent and the Conservatives on minus 7 per cent.
YouGov interviewed 2052 adults on Thursday and yesterday.
The poll found that the public trusts the Conservatives more on defence and security, with 41 per cent saying that they think May’s party would handle the issue best compared with 18 per cent that chose Labour.
A third (33 per cent) trust Corbyn to make the right decisions to keep Britain safe from terrorism, compared with 55 per cent who back the prime minister.
Anthony Wells, research director at YouGov, said: ‘‘Given Theresa May’s substantial lead on taking the right decisions on terrorism it would be a mistake to assume the narrowing Tory lead is necessarily connected to the bombing.
‘‘This is the first poll since the dementia tax row, and that seems a more plausible explanation,’’ Wells said.
The prime minister’s reversal on her social care reform was the first election campaign U-turn in Britain’s modern history.
The policy was devised by Nick Timothy, one of May’s two chiefs of staff, and had been announced without consultation with many ministers.
The YouGov poll suggests that voters want a more hardline approach to stopping terrorism. Sixty-eight per cent want to force social media and messaging companies to allow the security services to break encryption, a measure that is supported by the Tories and opposed by Labour.
Sixty-six per cent want to ban Britons who have visited Syria without permission from returning to the UK, while 60 per cent support armed troops on public patrol.
Fifty-six per cent would reintroduce the death penalty while 41 per cent would introduce internment – imprisoning people suspected of having extremist sympathies. – The Times