POLL: BORIS IS BEST BET TO BEAT CORBYN
Exclusive Mail survey reveals Johnson streets ahead of ALL his Tory rivals
BORIS Johnson’s leadership hopes were boosted last night by a poll showing he is the Tory most likely to beat Labour.
The exclusive Survation poll for the Daily Mail put the former foreign secretary more than 20 points ahead of Sajid Javid, his nearest rival for Theresa May’s job.
He was also the candidate with the highest ratings on the question of who would make a good prime minister and on who would be a vote winner.
But just 24 hours after Mr Johnson declared his desire to run for the leadership, Tory opponents began cranking up a ‘Stop Boris’ campaign. Several ministers said they would rather force a general election than allow Mr Johnson to enter Downing Street and pursue a No Deal Brexit.
As Mrs May’s hopes of passing a Brexit deal were seriously damaged by the acrimonious collapse of cross-party talks with Labour:
Jeremy Corbyn pulled the plug saying it was impossible to negotiate with an ‘unstable’ government;
Business groups reacted with dismay, complaining about ‘six wasted weeks’;
The Prime Minister attended the low-key private launch of the Tory European election campaign;
She also drew up a ‘bucket list’ of policy announcements for her final weeks in office.
The detailed poll of more than 1,000 people, conducted yesterday, asked who was most likely to beat Labour under Mr Corbyn.
Mr Johnson was streets ahead of the others on 32 per cent. His closest rival was Home Secretary Mr Javid on 11 per cent. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd were next, both with 7 per cent.
In head-to-head contests, Mr Johnson also triumphed against every other candidate. He was 17 points ahead of Michael Gove and Dominic Raab, ten ahead of Mr Hunt and 19 ahead of Matt Hancock. Significantly, 20 per cent of Labour voters said Mr Johnson’s leadership would make them more likely to vote Tory.
However he also had the highest negative ratings: he was seen as likely to be a good prime minister by 32 per cent of the public, but bad by 45 per cent.
Asked if Mr Johnson’s leadership would make them more likely to vote Conservative, 28 per cent of those questioned said yes – the
‘Impossible to negotiate’
highest figure for any candidate. But 38 per cent said they would be less likely to vote Tory.
If there was a general election tomorrow, the poll showed the Tories on 27 per cent, five points behind Labour, with the Brexit Party on 13 per cent. But with Mr Johnson as leader, the parties were neck and neck on 24 per cent, with the Brexit Party on only 7 per cent.
On Brexit, the poll found that opinion has barely changed from the referendum result nearly three years ago, with 49 per cent wanting to leave the EU and 51 per cent to remain. But the survey suggested Mr Johnson is seen as much more likely than Mrs May to ‘make a success of Brexit’.
It confirmed the Conservatives were likely to sustain heavy losses at the hands of Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party in Thursday’s European Parliament elections. The Tories were in third place on 14 per cent behind the Brexit Party on 30 per cent and Labour on 24 per cent. The Lib Dems were on 12 per cent and Change UK in the doldrums on just 3 per cent.