UK Labour leads ruling Tories by record margin in voter poll

THE Labour Party led the ruling Conservatives by 39 points in a UK poll on Friday (Oct 21), extending a series of recent multi-decade records for the opposition during Prime Minister Liz Truss’s chaotic tenure.

Some 53 per cent of Britons said they would vote Labour, compared with just 14 per cent who opted for the Tories, according to the poll of more than 1,200 adults by People Polling. The country’s traditional third party, the Liberal Democrats, trailed the Conservatives by just three percentage points.

The margin is even greater than the 36-point lead enjoyed by Labour in two recent polls by Redfield & Wilton Strategies, described by that pollster as the biggest enjoyed by any UK party in a quarter of a century. If replicated at a general election – the next is due by January 2025 – the poll points to an electoral wipe-out for the Conservatives – just three years after Truss’s predecessor, Boris Johnson, led them to an 80-seat majority in the House of Commons.

The stark data for the Tories reflects the damage wrought on her party by Truss, who after just 44 days in office announced on Thursday that she was stepping down. During her short tenure, she crashed the pound and the bond market with a massive package of tax cuts, many of which she was then forced to reverse. BLOOMBERG