Rishi Sunak’s election campaign has been dealt another hammer blow as a new poll shows Labour’s lead is at its highest level since Liz Truss’s premiership.
A survey by Opinium has Sir Keir Starmer’s party up four points to 45 per cent, with the Tories down two to 25 per cent, putting Labour on course for a landslide victory.
The poll, conducted between 29-31 May at a time of turmoil in Labour’s campaign, suggests that the prime minister’s eye-catching announcements on mandatory national service and tax cuts for pensioners have failed to land with voters.
And it is likely to fuel concerns in Tory high command that, after 14 years in power, the public has stopped listening to the party.
The prime minister’s campaign got off to a bad start after he called the snap election outside Downing Street on 22 May in the pouring rain as D: Ream’s pop song Thing’s Can Only Get Better blared in the background.
On a visit to the Titanic Quarters in Belfast later that week, he was then asked if he was captaining a sinking ship going into the election.
Tory strategists hoped that the two policy announcements this week – coupled with an internal Labour Party row over Diane Abbott standing in Hackney North and Stoke Newington – would start to move the dial.
However, the opposite appears to be true. The Opinium poll also shows Sir Keir has widened his lead over Sunak on a survey, asking who would make the best PM, to 16 points.
Despite the national service and ‘triple lock plus’ pledges, only 17 per cent of respondents said they thought the Tories had a good week – down from 21 per cent on the previous seven days when they were perceived to have performed worse.
Most people, Opinium said, thought the national service idea was a bad one (45 per cent v 35 per cent), although the worst proposal was Labour’s pledge to reduce the voting age to 16.
A majority thought the ‘triple lock plus’ proposal was a good idea.
Labour continues to lead on all of the major issues in the election, with bigger gaps on health and the NHS (+25) and housing and house prices (+19).
Its leads on the economy and immigration were slightly smaller but in good health at +9 in both.
On party voting intention, the Liberal Democrats were down 2 points to 8 per cent; the SNP unchanged on 3 per cent; the Greens down one point to 6 per cent and Reform up one point to 11 per cent. The previous poll was conducted on 23-24 May.
A separate mega-poll by Electoral Calculus and Find Out Now for GB News and the Daily Mail also showed the Tories on course for an electoral wipeout.
It suggested the party could return just 66 in parliament, with deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden, home secretary James Cleverly and defence secretary Grant Shapps all at risk of losing their seats.
However, Rishi Sunak is expected to hold on in Richmond, North Yorkshire, although with a massively reduced majority.
