Labour’s 18-point lead over the Tories on the NHS

Voters consider the Tories “toxic” on the subject of the NHS, according to their former deputy chairman. Lord Ashcroft, who bankrolled the party at the election before turning his hand to extensive political polling, has recently carried out research into voters’ views – and found that Labour are by far and away the most party most trusted to run the health service.

47% said that Labour are the best party to run the NHS, while 51% think the NHS has got worse over the past five years.

With the ongoing A&E crisis, the NHS has become an increasingly important topic for voters: another poll earlier this week found that it is now considered more important than immigration.

In an article for The Guardian, Ashcroft interestingly lays the blame for this Tory unpopularity on the failure to go through a comprehensive “modernisation” process for the Conservative Party. As such, the “decontamination of the party brand was never completed”.

This failure has led people to presume that the Lansley NHS reforms were a cost-saving exercise driven by a privatisation agenda, rather than “to cut bureaucracy or give more choice and control to patients”, as the Tories claimed.

Ashcroft’s research not only including polling of 20,000 people, and day-long discussions with 80 members of the public, allowing us one of the more comprehensive pictures of voter opinion on these topics. The polling also found that Labour hold leads over the Conservatives on tackling the cost of living, improving schools, and protecting the environment (although the Lib Dems beat Labour there). You can see a table of the topics below (click to enlarge):

Certainly, Labour will be pleased with the recent opinion trackers on the NHS. With the current Government’s mishandling of the health service, Labour are planning to make it central to their election campaign. If Ed Miliband and Andy Burnham can convince people it is an issue worth basing their vote on, then this research would suggest that Labour’s potential support in May is much higher than its current standing.