Labour support drops to 19-year low
Support for Tony Blair's Labour party had dropped in the wake of the recent terror plot
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Tuesday, 22, Aug 2006 06:19
Public support for the Labour party has dropped to a 19-year low, according to an opinion poll published today.
The ICM poll, conducted for the Guardian newspaper, will make alarming reading for prime minister Tony Blair and his colleagues, giving David Cameron's Conservatives a nine-point lead over Britain's governing party.
The paper claims that if repeated at the next general elections, the results would give the Conservatives a slim ten-seat majority in the House of Commons.
The poll will provide a boost to Mr Cameron, who has been attempting to revitalise his party since taking over as Conservative leader at the end of last year, in the wake of three successive election defeats to Labour.
According to the poll, support for Labour has slumped four points to 31 per cent over the last month – the party's lowest rating recorded by the Guardian/ICM survey since just before the 1987 election.
Support for the Conservative party climbed one point to 40 per cent over the month - its strongest showing since 1992 - while backing for the Liberal Democrats rose by five points to 22 per cent.
The left-leaning Guardian said that support for Labour had dropped in the wake of the recent alleged terror plot uncovered by police to blow up transatlantic airliners.
The ICM poll of 1,007 adults was conducted over the weekend, ahead of yesterday's move by Scotland Yard to charge 11 of the 23 people they arrested on August 10th in relation to the supposed plan to blow up a number of aircraft travelling from the UK to the United States.
The Guardian claimed that "an overwhelming majority of voters appear to pin part of the blame for the increased threat" facing Britain on Mr Blair's policy of intervening in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Around 72 per cent of those questioned for the ICM poll said they thought that government actions in areas such as the Middle East had made Britain more of a target for terrorists, while just one per cent said they thought Labour's foreign policy had made the country safer.
The poll also suggests that the public are increasingly distrustful of what ministers tell them about the terror threat facing the country.
Just 20 per cent of people said they thought that the government was telling the truth about the threat posed to the UK by terrorism, while 51 per cent said they thought ministers were not giving them the full truth and 21 per cent thought they had knowingly exaggerated the danger.