Labour poll support slumps
Labour’s support in the polls has slumped to a 19-year low and they are now ten points behind David Cameron’s Conservatives, a survey finds.
A new ICM poll for the Guardian finds just 29 per cent of voters back Labour, down three points on last month and the lowest rating since May 1987.
The Conservatives, by contrast, have gone up three percentage points since September to 39 per cent of support. The Liberal Democrats remain unchanged on 22 per cent.
The results follow a summer of infighting among Labour MPs, which forced Tony Blair to announce he would quit by next September. The party’s annual conference provided a temporary bounce in the polls, but today’s suggests this has disappeared.
Chancellor Gordon Brown – who is widely expected to be the next prime minister – this morning sought to reassure Labour supporters that voters would respond when they saw the economy doing well and schools and hospitals performing better.
“I think at the end of the day, you know, and Tony could be here or I could be here, that people vote on the policies,” he told GMTV.
“If you’re doing things right, and the economy is doing well, the health service is getting better, your schools are getting better…then people will respond.”
He added: “It’s a discipline on us to be better and more effective, and to listen to people.”
Today’s survey also assessed voters’ views of the NHS, in the wake of the launch of the Tories’ plans to take ministers out of the day to day running of the service.
In a blow to Labour, just 25 per cent of respondents said the NHS had improved since 1997, despite a near tripling of investment, and 30 per cent said it had got worse. The largest group, 39 per cent, said they had seen little change.
Just 14 per cent said the money had been well spent, but 72 per cent said a “lot” had been used badly.
But Mr Blair has always argued people’s perception of the NHS and their personal experiences of hospital care were very different, and the ICM poll supports this view.
A majority (60 per cent) said they would get excellent care on the NHS if they were unwell, compared to 30 per cent who said they would not, and 71 per cent said family and friends had had good experiences of the service.
Two-thirds said they would opt out and use the private sector if they could afford it, but 55 per cent said the NHS was the envy of the world.
There was general support for the use of the private sector in the NHS, with 70 per cent of voters and 73 per cent of Labour voters backing this kind of mixed provision.
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