The Tories’ disastrous election campaign has propelled Labour to a near-record poll lead with just 11 days to go until election day. The latest Opinium poll for the Observer puts Labour on 40% (unchanged compared with a week ago), with the Tories languishing on just 20% (down three on the week). The 20-point figure equals the highest Labour lead under Keir Starmer other than during the catastrophic and short-lived premiership of Liz Truss. Also ominously for the Tories, Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage, is now breathing down their necks on 16%, up two points on a week ago. The Lib Dems are unchanged on 12% while the Greens have also enjoyed a surge and now stand at 9%. While Labour is insisting that many voters remain undecided and that the polls may be misleading, the poll appears to confirm that the Tories have made no progress in a campaign littered with gaffes ever since Sunak launched it in the rain outside No 10. Unusually for an incumbent governing party, the Tories have actually gone backwards during the campaign, rather than narrowed the gap. On 24 May, two days after Sunak called the election, Labour’s lead with Opinium was just 14%.
The data in this weekend’s poll makes uniformly grim reading for Sunak and his increasingly despairing team. Labour has stretched its lead on all the main policy areas – the NHS, the economy, immigration, housing and crime – compared with the start of the campaign. When asked about last week’s campaigning, during which new revelations emerged about senior Tories having laid bets on the election date before Sunak officially called it, only 11% thought the Conservatives had had a good week, against 59% who said they’d had a bad one. By contrast, 43% thought Labour had a good week, against 18% who said they’d had a bad one. Starmer has also opened a commanding lead over Sunak when voters are asked who would make the best prime minister: 36% now say Starmer and only 17% Sunak. This gives Starmer his largest lead on the “best PM” question so far under Opinium’s polling.