Poll gives hope of Tory revival at next election
A SENIOR Tory MP has insisted the next general election is still up for grabs after research found many voters remain undecided.
Tobias Ellwood admitted that the Conservatives under Liz Truss had made mistakes and people had been unhappy with his party.
But he said Rishi Sunak was now doing an excellent job of stabilising the economy, adding that Labour was untested and voters did not know what Sir Keir Starmer’s party stood for.
Mr Ellwood’s comments came after research showed that in some areas almost one in three adults were unsure who to back at the next election, due next year.
The polling by Focaldata asked more than 10,000 people about their voting intentions at the next election and at first predicted that Labour would take power with 517 seats out of 650.
However, the figure fell sharply to 353 when the focus shifted to ‘don’t knows’, reported The Sunday Times.
The study for campaign group Best for Britain concluded that most undecided voters match the age and education profiles of Conservative backers.
If they plumped for the Tories, this would deny many seats Labour is at present projected to win.
The research added that ‘Conservative-leaning voters have been wavering rather than switching to Labour’.
Yesterday Mr Ellwood, chairman of the Commons defence committee, was asked if he believed that ‘all is not lost for the Tories’.
He replied: ‘Oh absolutely. There’s everything to fight for at the next election.
‘There are concerns about what the Conservatives did, we got it wrong under Liz Truss and the economic direction that we were travelling.’
But he said that the Tories had been able to carry out a ‘massive course correction’ and had restored fiscal responsibility.
Mr Ellwood, the MP for Bournemouth East, added: ‘Nobody knows what Labour stands for. They’re unhappy with the Conservatives but people are now reconsidering the Conservatives.
‘The Prime Minister is doing an excellent job in moving our country forward through very, very difficult times.’
Mr Ellwood said voters had to ask themselves if they wanted in power an ‘untested Labour Party’ or Mr Sunak, who is ‘able to actually steady the ship and advance the country forward’.
‘We’ve got 24 months, two years to actually work out what’s going on.
‘I suggest the polls are going to look very, very different between now and in two years’ time,’ he said.
AN opinion poll showing the fragility of Labour support in key electoral battlegrounds offers the Tories a crumb of comfort after a disastrous 2022.
Over the past 12 months, the Tory party has given voters precious little reason to believe. A year of coups, crises and constant rebellion has seen its reputation for competence hit rock bottom.
Yet the poll suggests even at this low point, up to 30 per cent of voters in constituencies Labour hopes to take from the Conservatives are still undecided. Many fear the prospect of a lurch to the Left, and there is little faith that Sir Keir Starmer would make a better prime minister than Rishi Sunak.
Persuading these waverers to vote Tory is a huge task. Mr Sunak must champion the bold One Nation Conservatism that delivered a landslide for Boris Johnson in 2019. He must channel some of his old boss’s energy and optimism to lift the funk of passive defeatism into which the UK seems to have fallen. There is also the vexed question of growth. High taxes and even higher borrowing are strangling recovery.
Also necessary for a speedy return to prosperity is for white-collar Britain to get off the sofa and back to the office.
On these and many other fronts, Mr Sunak must take the fight to Sir Keir.
If Rishi can expose Labour’s policy vacuum and convey a confident, hopeful Conservative vision for Britain’s future, he may yet hold on to the keys of his newly redecorated Downing Street home.