May’s party has 19-point lead over Labour: Poll

london — Britain’s governing Conservative Party holds a 19 point lead over Labour, a poll by ICM said on Monday, a commanding advantage just slightly lower than the record lead recorded the previous weekend.

Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservatives took 47 per cent of the vote in the poll, with support for Labour at 28 per cent.

Last weekend ICM found a 22 percentage point lead for the Conservatives, a record for the firm. Monday’s poll was the latest in a string of polls to show that Labour was closing the gap slightly.

“A slight fightback is recorded for Labour, but not to the extent identified in a couple of other polls,” Martin Boon, director at ICM, said, adding that a methodological change had also affected the poll. “Without that, it would have been ‘as you were’.”

The Liberal Democrats polled at 9 percent while eurosceptic UKIP had 8 per cent support. ICM surveyed 2,012 adults between April 26 and 28.

Meanwhile, Britain on Monday rejected an account of a difficult meeting between May and the head of the European Commission that was reported by German newspaper FAS, reiterating that the meeting had gone well.

The British prime minister and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker met on Wednesday for dinner, ahead of talks over Britain’s departure from the European Union that are expected to begin in June. Both sides said the meeting had been constructive.—