Brown taking Labour down with him
By politics.co.uk staff
Gordon Brown’s leadership of the Labour party is being questioned again today six months since the last real expressions of doubt about his ability to continue in the job evaporated.
The prime minister is today accused of dragging the Labour vote down as a Guardian/ICM poll showed that 63 per cent of voters think Labour would do better with a new leader. The poll also shows the Conservatives maintaining a 12 point lead over the Labour party while the Liberal Democrats have gained two points.
The poll finds that only 28 per cent of voters think Brown is the leader most likely to win a general election for Labour on polling day.
Even Labour supporters are beginning to show signs of doubt. Among people who voted for the current government in 2005, 45 per cent still support Mr Brown and 49 per cent another leader. Among people who still stay they intend to vote Labour next time the split is 48 per cent to 47 per cent.
The Conservatives have led by 12 points in all three ICM polls so far this year – enough for a solid working majority. The party is picking up support from the Lib Dems, 23 per cent of whose voters from 2005 say they may switch to voting Tory, while the Conservatives have also picked up a further 15 per cent of the same group of 2005 voters from Labour.
While public dislike of Mr Brown appears to be quite strong there are few who genuinely believe the latest polling is likely to trigger a bid for the leadership since many within the party feel they flirted with the option last summer, and no credible alternative the prime minister emerged.
That said, there has been recent speculation that cabinet ministers are positioning themselves in case one of their colleagues makes a surprise bid, which included Harriet Harman the deputy leader of the Labour party having to deny that she was interested in the top job.
The economy remains the defining political issue of the moment. The latest poll asks voters to rank their concerns by importance and can be measured against similar Guardian/ICM findings from the 2005 election. In 2005 only 14 per cent of voters said the economy was the issue that most affected their vote; now 35 per cent say so.
