Source - Choppers politics 14/12/22
Afternoon,
Rishi Sunak received one of the loudest welcomes I have heard from Conservative MPs today as he turned up for the final Prime Minister's Questions of the year.
Part of the cheers were out of sheer relief from Tory MPs that the end of a torrid year for the party is in sight. Parliament rises for its recess on Tuesday but most MPs are heading off for Christmas tomorrow night.
At Prime Minister's Questions, Sunak clashed with Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer over tomorrow's nurses' strike, as he accused the PM of "playing games with people's health" and urged ministers to intervene to stop the strike tomorrow.
Sunak was having none of it: "The honourable gentleman says to get round the table but we all know what that means, that is just simply a political formula for avoiding taking a position on this issue.
"If he thinks the strikes are wrong, he should say so. If he thinks it is right that pay demands of 19 per cent are met then he should say so. What is weak is he is not strong enough to stand up to the unions."
Starmer used the strikes as a device to mention (again) non-domiciled status for very wealthy foreigners which Labour would scrap and spend the cash on the NHS. "Why has he not got the guts to do it?" he asked.
Sunak's defence of non-doms is difficult for him because his wife Akshata Murty is a non-dom who voluntarily pays UK tax on her global earnings.
But it seems to me that Starmer is fast running out of attack lines on Sunak. There was no mention of Sunak's immigration plans which have been given extra resonance by the overnight tragedy in the Channel.
Labour does not have a cogent answer on immigration demonstrated by the tasteless jibe by Labour MP Clive Lewis today on the BBC, when he compared the holiday camps for migrants to "concentration camps".
Yes the polls are bad for the Tories, judging by the latest Savanta polling which says that Labour is on track to win a 314-seat majority in the next election.
But is this the real story. I bumped into a Cabinet minister last night in the Commons who said that not enough attention is being paid to the "don't knows" in the polling.
This new poll giving Labour a 314-seat majority does not include "don't knows". But a poll last week also from Savanta - which found a 10 point swing to the Tories - did, with seven per cent undecided.
Savanta's Chris Hopkins tells me that this group "do still tend to be far more likely to have voted Conservative at the last election".
He adds: "Labour's lead in Voting Intention polls has been inflated by higher-than-usual proportions of 2019 Conservatives being undecided. In that poll last week, just 10 per cent of those who voted Conservative in 2019 are undecided, compared to 15 per cent the week before."
So it seems that Tory voters - justifiably angry with their party - are sitting on their hands. For now. That is the challenge for Sunak - to persuade the undecided voters to give the Conservatives another chance.
Cheerio!
Chopper
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