VOTERS BACK BORIS
PM twice as popular as Corbyn in new poll Tories set for 14-seat majority in Commons
VOTERS are ready to give Boris Johnson a Tory Commons majority in a snap general election, an exclusive opinion poll for the Daily Express showed last night.
Research by ComRes gave the Prime Minister’s party a thumping five-point lead over Labour in the race to form the next government.
Mr Johnson was also more than twice as popular as Jeremy Corbyn as the voters’ choice about who is the best candidate to hold the
the keys to Downing Street. The poll findings were another boost for the Prime Minister yesterday as his efforts to secure a last-ditch Brexit deal entered a critical phase.
Officials are expected to hold intense talks over the weekend in a final scramble to ensure the blueprint for a Withdrawal Agreement can be drafted in time for next week’s crunch EU summit.
Data from the poll also suggested voters are more likely to blame Parliament or the European Commission than Mr Johnson if the talks falter.
Senior Tory MP Mark Harper said: “This is yet another poll which shows that the public wants Boris Johnson and the Conservatives to get Brexit done and then focus on the other important issues which the public care about. There is little support in the country for people who either want to block Brexit or cancel it altogether.”
Nigel Evans, another senior Tory
MP, said the poll showed why “Corbyn is running a million miles from an election”.
Mr Evans said: “Increasingly the voters are turning to Boris because they know he is the only leader in Parliament still trying to deliver on his promises.”
ComRes questioned just over 2,000 voters online on Wednesday and Thursday this week for the poll commissioned by the Daily Express.The survey began after the Prime Minister made his offer of a Brexit deal to the EU.
One in three voters said they would back the Tories if a general election was held compared with 27 per cent for Labour, unchanged from a previous ComRes poll at the beginning of the week.
The Lib Dems were down one point to 18 per cent while support for Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party also fell by a point to 12 per cent. Both the Scottish National Party and the Greens stood at four per cent.
A similar vote share at a general election would give Boris Johnson a Commons majority of 14 seats, according to the website Electoral Calculus.
The website predicted the Tories would get 332 Commons seats, with 226 for Labour, 33 for the Lib Dems, 37 for the SNP, one Green and none for the Brexit Party.
Mr Johnson was chosen by 38 per cent of voters in the survey as the politician who would make the best prime minister. Mr Corbyn was backed by just 17 per cent.
Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson was even less popular than her Labour counterpart, gaining the support of a mere 12 per cent.
With the Brexit negotiations hanging in the balance as the poll was conducted, 85 per cent said Parliament would hold much or some of the responsibility should the UK’s departure from the EU be pushed beyond October 31.
Seventy-one per cent thought the European Commission should bear responsibility in such circumstances while the figure for the Prime Minister was 67 per cent. More voters quizzed in the survey (38 per cent) thought the Prime Minister’s offer of a deal was “a reasonable compromise” that the EU should accept.
A total of 39 per cent of voters said they would be “prepared to accept a short-term economic hit as a price for having a no-deal Brexit”.
In more bleak news for Mr Corbyn, 41 per cent of voters thought the opposition was wrong to stop a general election.
Chris Hopkins, head of politics at ComRes, said: “The public are as split over the issue of Brexit as they have ever been, with almost equal proportions willing and unwilling to accept no deal, an extension, or Boris Johnson’s proposed new withdrawal deal.
“If a general election is the way forward – and two in five adults disagree that opposition MPs were right to block Boris Johnson from calling one – then the Conservatives are currently sitting in the best position.
“Boris Johnson currently has a six percentage point lead over Labour and the public are more than twice as likely to favour him over Jeremy Corbyn.”
THE poll in today’s newspaper is a further endorsement of Boris Johnson and the strategy he is pursuing to resolve Brexit.
It shows the sound and fury of Tory rebel Remainers, Labour, SNP and the other ragtag friends of Brussels in Parliament is not influencing the British public.
Ordinary voters have ignored their ludicrous claims against our Prime Minister, their barbs about his private life, calling him a racist, and, the biggest falsehood of all, that he is not serious about getting a deal.
The ComRes poll puts the Conservatives five points ahead of Labour and would be enough for an election victory.
This also shows that the broadcasters, perhaps most of all Channel 4, whose head of news called Boris Johnson a “known liar”, are also now turning the public off with their often less than impartial coverage.
The reality is that Mr Johnson is serious about getting a deal, upholding the integrity of British democracy, finishing the job and delivering Brexit.
This is why the public back Boris and are right to do so.
No wonder Jeremy Corbyn and Labour are terrified of an election as they know the judgment on them will be severe indeed.