May comes out fighting after Tory poll lead slips
Theresa May vowed last night to wrest back the initiative in the battle for Downing street after a poll showed her lead over Labour had shrunk to five points.
resuming her election campaign after the Manchester bombing, Mrs May highlighted the ‘stark choice’ voters face in deciding whether she or Jeremy Corbyn will lead Brexit talks.
a YouGov poll – the first since Monday night’s terror attack – had put the Conservatives on 43 per cent, with Labour on 38. This compared with the firm’s survey last week, which gave the Tories a ninepoint lead, and one held just after Mrs May called next month’s election, which gave her a 23-point advantage.
The Conservatives’ lead was largely cut
due to a dip in support among middle-class aBC1 voters – suggesting the party has suffered after criticism of the so-called ‘dementia tax’. The Tory manifesto, published last Thursday, originally said there would be no cap on social care costs – but the Prime Minister reversed the unpopular policy just four days later, saying there would indeed be a ceiling for charges. speaking in Taormina, sicily, where she is attending a G7 summit, Mrs May said the only poll that mattered was on June 8. repeating the warning she made in last week’s Mail, Mrs May stressed: ‘If you look at the figures in the house of Commons before it was dissolved, the loss of just six seats would mean that my government would lose its majority. ‘so when people go to the polls, people have a stark choice between a strong and stable government and a government led by Jeremy Corbyn failing to protect our national security. ‘The only poll that counts when it comes to elections is the poll that takes place on election day ... and I will continue to be out cam- paigning across the country. Obviously you will recognise that we suspended campaigning for a period following the terrible attack that took place in Manchester in respect for those who sadly lost their lives and those who were injured. I will be out for the rest of the campaign and pointing out several things to people.’ The Prime Minister said: ‘There is this clear choice between myself, the strong and stable government that we will show, working in the national interest and getting the best possible deal out of Brexit – and Jeremy Corbyn and the coalition of chaos propped up by the Lib Dems and the sNP. This is why the Brexit negotiations matter, because the european Union wants them to start 11 days after the election. We have to have a government that knows what its approach will be, and that has the strong hand to take into that negotiation process.
YouGov said the Tories had not necessarily lost support as a result of the Manchester attack. It pointed out that its previous survey was carried out last Thursday and Friday, just after the Tories launched their manifesto – but before the U-turn on a care cap.
a spokesman for the polling firm said: ‘While our results from last week showed a nine-point Conservative lead and our newly published poll for the Times shows a five-point Tory advantage, it is worth bearing in mind that a lot has happened in the past week, both in the world – with the manifesto and Manchester – and among voters.
‘There is no way of guessing what will happen in the two weeks to polling day but we will be able to be more confident about how voting intention settles down over the next few days.’
The latest YouGov poll shows that Mrs May’s personal ratings have risen after the bombing, while Mr Corbyn’s have dipped.
The Prime Minister has a 45 to 28 per cent advantage over the Labour leader on who makes the best prime minister.
Mrs May is also far more trusted than Corbyn, by 55 to 33 per cent, to make decisions on terrorism.
a breakdown of voters by class shows that the dip in Conservative support has happened among middle-class aBC1 voters, where the Tories’ lead is down to three points. she retains an eight-point advantage among working- class C2De voters.
If I lose just SIX seats Corbyn will win From last Saturday’s Mail
AFTER the horror, grief and soul-searching, the contest to determine Britain’s future begins again. And what an extraordinary election this is turning out to be.
On any rational analysis of the contenders’ policies and personal qualities, the result seemed a foregone conclusion. Or so the experts told us.
Almost unanimously, they declared Jeremy Corbyn and his ragbag of hard-Left zealots unelectable, with an extremist manifesto guaranteed to ruin the country.
By contrast, they saw that Theresa May was highly experienced, diligent, levelheaded and widely trusted.
Victory was assured, said the pundits – all the more so, after she purged her party of the gimmickry and cronyism of the Cameron years and focused on struggling families. The only question, they thought, was how big her majority would be.
But then came her wobble over care funding. And now an astonishing poll shows Labour closing the gap from 23 points at the start of the campaign to just five.
Surreally, Mr Corbyn seems to have gained ground by posturing as the champion of inherited wealth, attacking Tory plans to recover care costs from the estates of those leaving more than £100,000. Yet he fails to mention that his own plans would hammer bequests many times harder.
Indeed, yesterday the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies laid bare the true costs of Labour’s fantasy economics, saying the party’s plans would raise tax to record levels in peacetime, while leaving a black hole in the public finances.
In a blistering assessment, IFS deputy director Carl Emmerson said: ‘For Labour we can have pretty much everything – free higher education, free childcare, more spending on pay, health, infrastructure. And the pretence is that can all be funded by faceless corporations and “the rich”.’
For ‘pretence’, read ‘naked lie’. As Mr Emmerson points out, much of the burden of Labour’s reckless spending would inevitably fall on ordinary working families, while pulverising businesses, depressing wages and causing widespread job losses.
True, the impartial IFS also raises doubts about Tory spending plans, predicting the deficit will still be significant in 2022 and saying lower immigration will hit tax revenues. But the main blast of its attack is directed squarely at Labour’s lunacy. Nor does Mr Corbyn’s opportunist posturing stop at the economy. With highly questionable taste, he sought yesterday to capitalise on the Manchester atrocity, preposterously presenting himself as the true champion of national security!
This is the man, remember, who has voted 56 times against anti-terror legislation, shared platforms with Islamist fanatics, joined demonstrations to support IRA bombers and, as we report on this page, called at a Communist congress for Britain to leave Nato.
Meanwhile, the politician he’s put in charge of the anti-terror brief is that blustering incompetent Diane Abbott – who has voted 30 times against increasing the authorities’ powers to fight terrorism.
True, opinion polls are hugely discredited. But with so many agreeing that Mrs May’s lead is narrowing, the acute danger to our livelihoods and security is vividly clear.
So, too, is the duty of every patriotic voter on June 8. AMID the outpouring of public compassion for the Manchester victims, the Mail today launches a practical way for readers to help. We ask you simply to take redundant mobile phones to any of Britain’s 1,000 branches of Carphone Warehouse. The money raised from recycling them will go to our Mobiles for Manchester appeal to support the injured and bereaved – and also to help inter-faith youth charities across Britain. We know our wonderful readers will rally to this call.