Tories jump to a 4-point lead over Labour in the polls9
THERESA May’s Conservatives have opened up an astonishing four-point opinion poll lead over Labour despite the party’s recent infighting, a survey revealed yesterday.
Data from polling firm YouGov gave the Conservatives a 43 per cent share of support compared with 39 per cent for Labour.
Tory backing was up one point compared with the previous YouGov voting-intention survey at the end of last month while Labour’s was down three points.
The levels of support shown in the poll of 2,000 voters would be enough to give the Tories a slender Commons majority of two seats under current parliamentary boundaries, according to the website Electoral Calculus.
Lib Dem support stood at eight per cent, up two points from last month, while other parties accounted for the preferences of 10 per cent of voters quizzed.
Mrs May was also far ahead of Jeremy Corbyn on the question of which party leader “would make the best Prime Minister”.
She was preferred by 37 per cent of voters compared with 29 per cent for the hard-Left Labour leader. A third of voters (33 per cent) were unable to choose between the two.
The poll findings boosted morale in Downing Street yesterday, with Gavin Barwell, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, writing on Twitter: “Just one poll but...”
They follow a series of spats between Tory ministers and backbenchers over the Government’s Brexit plans and calls from some MPs for the Prime Minister to quit.
Despite the poll lead ministers still fear the Tories will suffer a hammering in local elections in London and other Metropolitan areas in May.
One Cabinet source said: “Things are looking really bad in London. We haven’t yet got our campaign plans in place for the local elections.”
The source feared there was a serious chance that the Tories will lose their grip on previous stronghold boroughs in the capital including Barnet, Westminster and Wandsworth.
Yesterday’s YouGov figures gave Labour a six-point lead over the Tories in London and suggested Mr Corbyn’s party is still ahead nationally among voters aged under 50.
Tory peer Lord Hayward, a polling expert, feared his party could lose control of Trafford Council in Greater Manchester, as well as London citadels.
He said: “The Conservatives have the fight of their lives on their hands to hold on to Westminster, Wandsworth and Trafford.
Mission
“They will lose seats in Labour areas too, where they used to have a strong presence. In Redbridge, Ealing, Enfield and Greenwich, they could be reduced to a rump of a few seats.”
Labour officials dismissed the Tory lead shown by the YouGov poll last night. One senior insider close to the party’s leadership said: “We have had a few bad headlines recently and this poll reflects that but I’m not worried.
“There really is only one poll that counts, as last year’s general election proved.”
Yesterday’s YouGov poll followed a major Tory fund-raising event at the Natural History Museum in central London on Wednesday night.
Mrs May told the gathering of donors and other supporters of her determination to defeat Mr Corbyn’s hard-Left brand of politics. She said: “As Conservatives we are on a renewed mission to fight and win the battle of ideas and to defeat socialism today as we have defeated it before.”