THE Tories are still expected to lose the next General Election despite Rishi Sunak's early days as Prime Minister giving a boost to the beleaguered party, a poll has shown.
During Liz Truss's 49 days in office, numerous polls showed an almost complete wipeout for the Tories across the UK, with one suggesting that had a snap election been called then both Scottish Secretary Alister Jack and Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross would have lost their seats to the SNP.
And now Sunak is polling better than his predecessor and slightly better than Keir Starmer, but the Labour leader is seen as being most likely to be the next prime minister.
The Ipsos poll found 34% of people had confidence in Sunak’s long-term economic plan – twice the number that thought the same about Truss.
Some 38% of people also said they expected Sunak to do a good job as Prime Minister, slightly more than the 36% who thought the same about Starmer, whose ratings have fallen since Truss’s resignation.
Truss and then-chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng's mini-Budget led to the pound crashing to a record low against the US dollar, a dramatic intervention from the Bank of England (BoE) to stop pension pots collapsing, and caused mortgage interest rates to sky-rocket.
Ipsos director of politics Keiran Pedley said the numbers showed “some signs of encouragement” for Sunak, adding: “The public are less hostile to the Conservatives’ economic plans than they were under Liz Truss and there is little to choose between Sunak and Starmer on who the public think would make a good Prime Minister.”
However, the poll of 1000 adults carried out at the start of November – but before the resignation of Gavin Williamson – was not universally positive for Sunak.
More than half of people said they were not confident that the Tories had a good long-term economic plan or could provide the country with strong and stable leadership.
Only 27% of people thought Sunak was likely to win the next general election while 46% of people thought Sir Keir would be prime minister – up from 28% at the beginning of the year.
Starmer's Labour Party also led Sunak’s Tories on 12 out of 14 policy areas including acting with integrity, improving public services and managing immigration. Sunak’s party led on growing the economy, while the two were tied on having the right foreign policy.
Pedley said: “There are still signs that the Conservative brand is in trouble, evidenced by the fact that a hypothetical Labour government under Starmer is seen as much more likely to deliver on public priorities around the cost of living and improving public services.”
