Bleak outlook for Sunak as poll still gives Labour 21 point lead

Rishi Sunak shares first Party Political Broadcast

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A leading pollster has claimed the outlook is “bleak” for the Conservatives and Rishi Sunak as Labour has maintained its massive 21 point lead in this week’s Techne UK tracker poll for Express.co.uk. Sir Keir Starmer’s party has maintained its lead from last week despite Mr Sunak’s strong performance against the Labour leader in Prime Minister’s questions and releasing his first party political broadcast since entering Downing Street.

The one glimmer of hope for Mr Sunak was that Conservative support increased one point to 26 percent, but so did Labour’s to 47 percent.

Last week’s 25 percent was the lowest recorded for the Tories by Techne UK since it started polling in Britain three years ago.

However, this week Reform UK’s march in taking Tory votes also has stalled falling back for the first time in almost two months by one point to 7 percent.

Michela Morizzo, chief executive of Techne UK, said: “Our tracker poll today very much reflects almost a status quo between the main parties from last week. Labour Party national vote share rises 1 point to 47 percent and similarly the Conservative Party vote share also goes up by 1 point taking them to 26 percent.

“After a difficult week with ongoing cost-of-living issues and a winter of strike discontent ongoing it might be seen as a small glimmer of light for Rishi Sunak and his party to to hold their position at 21 points less than Labour.

“That being said the overall picture remains very bleak no doubt for the Conservative Party, particularly as no end is in site for the ever increasing problems the UK Government is facing on multiple fronts.”

If this result was repeated in an election Electoral Calculus forecasts Labour would have a majority of 232 with the Tories facing a worse defeat than the historically bad one in 1997 under John Major’s leadership against Tony Blair.

The number of Tory seats would collapse by 250 to just 115.

However, a senior backbench MP and ally of the Prime Minister’s told Express.co.uk that Mr Sunak “can turn it around before the next election because Labour and Starmer offer so little.”

But the MP warned: “We are going to get badly beaten in the local elections in May we just have to accept that.

“It will be the first opportunity the public will have to punish us for Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.”

However, other MPs including those loyal to Boris Johnson, who was seen to have a soft relaunch this week with the unveiling of his portrait at the Carlton Club, beleive that poor results in May could see Mr Sunak’s leadership challenged.

One Mp said: “He will have been in power nine months by then, that is more than enough time given that we were only five points behind when Boris was forced to resign.”

The survey of 1,624 voters yesterday and today again showed that Labour has a clear lead in every age and income category.

Leave voters still largely back the Tories with 44 percent but alost a quarter (24 percent) now back Labour even though Sir Keir was a leading Remainer and 16 percent back Richard Tice’s Reform UK, formerly the Brexit Party.

Even among 2019 Conservative voters almost one in five (19 percent) now back Labour while 14 percent support Reform UK meaning that a third of the historic coalition of voters bult by Mr Johnson have now turned their backs on the party.

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