This is not a government with any real support for its approach and main policy

This is not a government with any real support for its approach and main policy

Today sees some polling about Boris Johnson turning the United Kingdom in to a prorogue nation, it’s not particularly pleasant reading for the mandateless Prime Minister whose government has not won a single vote in Parliament.

55% of the public do not trust Boris Johnson to make the right decision on Brexit. Only 13% of the public believe the Prime Minister’s reasons for prorogation, 70% think prorogation was done to limit the opportunities to stop No Deal which the Defence Secretary admitted to yesterday, then Boris Johnson effectively did the same today.

Further polling backs other recent polls that show significantly more people are opposed to No Deal than support it.

I wonder if this is these polling results are an artefact of the partisan times we live in after the 2016 referendum coupled with Boris Johnson lacking a mandate from the country, after all Boris Johnson receiving 100,000 fewer votes in winning the Tory leadership this year than Owen Smith received when he lost to Jeremy Corbyn in 2016.

But yet despite all these supplementaries being sub optimal for Boris Johnson the Tories have an 11% lead with YouGov and the Prime Minister has a 53% lead over Corbyn in leader ratings and Ipsos MORI has a similar result.

As a strong believer that leader ratings are a much better predictor of general election results than voting intention I suspect Boris Johnson will win an autumn general election based on the leadership polling. Oh Jeremy Corbyn, why do you have to be so dire?

My other expectation is that like 1992 the Tories will get absolutely hammered in the following general election as sustained No Deal will be like the winter of discontent meets Black Wednesday and will keep the Tories out of power for a significant period.

TSE

PS – For an excellent in depth analysis of the Ipsos MORI polling see this twitter thread by Keiran Pedley by clicking here.

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