More people trust Theresa May to protect the NHS than Jeremy Corbyn, a new poll has found, a serious blow for the leader of the party that has historically been the biggest advocate of the health service.
The survey for Good Morning Britain and Survation found a narrow but significant margin in favour of the Tory leader of 42% to 39%.
Corbyn also lost out when asked “who would promote a fairer society?”
Compounding Corbyn’s election campaign woes, amongst Labour voters, one in five think May would make a better PM and almost a quarter, 23%, “don’t know” who they prefer.
The results were met with a mixture of disbelief and accusations of bias and conspiracy.
The Disbelief
The Bias
The Conspiracy
The poll comes a day after a separate survey for The Guardian gave the Conservatives a record 22-point lead over Labour with only a month left before the General Election.
Corbyn is struggling to win over voters with even life-long Labour supporters saying they are considering voting Tory in June.
In a HuffPost UK-Edelman Focus Group in Slough last month, men and women from ‘ordinary working families’ in the key seat were scathing about everything from the scruffy state of the Labour leader’s garden to his failure to sing the national anthem.
Several liked Labour’s policies on the NHS and pay caps, but most ridiculed its plan for extra bank holidays and said that the presence of Corbyn was the main deterrent to backing the party.
In one striking remark, a lifelong Labour voter said he would switch to the Tories with the sole intention of removing Corbyn as party leader.
On the NHS, Corbyn announced yesterday he would scrap hospital car parking charges by increasing taxes on private healthcare if the party gets into government.
Corbyn slammed hospital parking charges as ‘a tax on serious illness’
“Our hospitals are struggling from under-funding at the hands of Theresa May’s Conservative government, but the gap should not be filled by charging sick patients, anxious relatives and already hard-pressed NHS staff for an essential service,” he said.
But a Tory spokesman said the pledge ‘isn’t worth the paper it’s written on’.
“With Corbyn in charge of our Brexit negotiations, the economy and our NHS would be at grave risk. There would be less money to spend in hospitals, not more,” the party added.
Corbyn yesterday insisted he will not resign if Labour loses the general election, a move likely to divide the party again if it faces heavy defeat.
Survation interviewed 1005 GB residents aged 18+ via telephone interview using a combination of mobile and landline data.
Fieldwork was conducted from the 5th 6th of May. Sample Size 1005.
Full data tables and methodology can be found on the following link:
http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Final-GMB-GE2017-Poll-I-050517TOCH-1c0d0h5.pdf