Tory lead narrows
Labour are beginning to recover after the Conservatives’ poll lead narrowed to two points.
In the first opinion poll after Gordon Brown was confirmed as the next prime minister, Labour’s support claimed two points to 32 per cent, equal to their support at the end of last year.
Despite gaining more than 800 seats in the local election in May, the Conservatives fell three points to 34 per cent, returning to levels last seen more than a year ago.
Transferred to seats, the Guardian/ICM poll would leave Labour 25 seats shy of a majority, but still the largest party.
This would mirror the present situation in Wales, where the assembly is yet to elect a government and Labour leader Rhodri Morgan will struggle to form a minority government.
However, David Cameron still appears to be more appealing to voters than Mr Brown. When the Tory leader’s name is mentioned, Conservative support climbs to 38 per cent, while the prospect of Mr Brown sees Labour slip to 30 per cent.
Although the Conservatives have criticised Mr Blair’s long departure period, voters do not appear eager to see the prime minister leave Downing Street.
More than half of voters want Mr Blair to stay in power until June 27th, while 38 per cent want him to leave now. This rises to 71 per cent and 28 per cent among Labour voters.
Both trends have cast doubts on the prospect of a ‘Brown bounce’. Further, the poll suggests Mr Brown is out of touch with voter opinion.
Asked for their political views, 65 per cent of voters place themselves in the centre or one notch away. This broadly collates with the public perception of Mr Blair, with 51 per cent regarding him as a centrist.
Some 45 per cent say the same of Brown, while 25 per cent say he is fairly or very left wing. Just 13 per cent said the same of Blair.
After spending the past week battling with his party over grammar schools, Mr Cameron may not be surprised to learn he is seen as more left wing than his party. A third of voters think Conservative MPs are to the right of their leader, who is seen as a centrist by half of voters.
Meanwhile, a former Labour minister has urged Mr Brown not to continue the haemorrhage of middle-class, southern voters – who were crucial to the 1997 landslide success.
John Denham claimed Labour had wrongly stereotyped southern voters as affluent, selfish consumers and urged Mr Brown to recapture middle England.
He told a Fabian Society meeting in London that a quarter of 1997 Labour voters had abandoned the party by 1997, mainly in the south. Nearly half of local authorities in the south-east have no Labour councillor.
Mr Denham argued some Labour colleagues were wrongly convinced south means selfish and become overly concerned with maintaining the party’s traditional support.
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