Why Labour's unreal poll lead won't last.

 Source - Chopper 12/12/22

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Afternoon,

Privately Conservative strategists are growing more optimistic about overhauling Labour’s poll lead. “Very, very soft” was the verdict when I asked one Number 10 adviser last week about Labour’s double digit lead in the polls.

Polling from Savanta offered some hope for the Tories, with the polling company’s UK headline voting intention polling showing a 10-point swing for the Tories.

Labour was still way ahead (42 points) over the Conservatives (31 points), and the Liberal Democrats (10 points) and Reform UK (five points) unchanged.

The usual warnings apply - this is just an isolated poll etc. But there is some reason for optimism as Rishi Sunak passes the unwanted record set by Liz Truss of 49 days as Prime Minister in 10 Downing Street.

Even some Labour figures quietly admit that the Conservatives cannot be written off. One former Labour strategist tells me: “I don’t think the Tories are in as bad a place as people are suggesting.”

The strategist points out how the Tories’ landslide in 2019 was in part driven by the fact that hundreds of thousands of former Labour voters switched sides.

If PM Rishi Sunak can persuade these voters not to go back to Labour and stay with the Conservatives - by more robust policies on immigration, for example - the Tories have a chance.

The strategist told me that Labour “cannot solidify their lead. It is an unreal lead. It has not been earned. As an Opposition you cannot use incompetence as a strategy”.

I have been saying here for months that Labour’s lead in the polls has been gifted by an apparently exhausted Tory Government.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer appears to get this and often stresses how he cannot afford any complacency - he told me a fortnight ago how he makes this point every time he speaks to his shadow Cabinet.

His remarks this morning on this week’s historic strike by nurses - that the Royal College of Nursing’s pay demands are “more than can be afforded by the Government” - are telling.

They show for the first time that Starmer is prepared to put himself on the side of voters against the unions, many of which donate heavily to Labour.

Starmer has already said he does not want his MPs to go on picket lines and his comments about the nurses’ pay demand suggests he knows Labour has to move away from the side of strikers to strivers who just want to get to work, or pick up their children from school.

Sunak has finally shown he understands this by convening a Cobra meeting to start to coordinate a cross-Government approach to the strike action.

The Tories have a (slim) chance at the next election if they can just start to speak to the voters who jumped ship from Labour in 2019 - and that means decisive action on immigration before Christmas, and - later next year - cutting taxes.

Cheerio!

Chopper