Labour secures five-point lead over Tories, Ipsos MORI poll shows

New polling has indicated that the Labour Party is now leading the Tories on Westminster voting intention by five points, with 42% of people saying they would back Labour compared to 37% who would vote for the Conservatives.

In research carried out between October 22nd and 28th, Ipsos MORI has shown that support for the opposition party rose five points since last month while Boris Johnson’s Tory Party saw its popularity fall by three.

This is the first time that Labour has been ahead in an Ipsos MORI poll since Theresa May stepped down as Prime Minister and Johnson took over the top job, with the party seeing its best score since March 2018.

The research also showed that satisfaction with the way in which the Prime Minister has been running the country has fallen sharply – just 33% of respondents reported that they are satisfied, down from 40% last month, with 59% dissatisfied.

Labour leader Keir Starmer’s approval ratings are positive as the survey indicated that 45% of the British public are happy with his performance, compared to 30% who declared themselves dissatisfied.

The Conservative Party has faced significant public and political pressure since it voted down a recent motion put forward by Labour that called on the government to provide free school meals for children during the holidays.

As Ipsos MORI has highlighted, the field work was carried out before publication of the Equality and Human Rights Commission report into antisemitism within Labour and the suspension of former party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

YouGov polling on Thursday indicated that 58% of the public thought that the party was right to suspend Corbyn, compared to 13% who thought it was wrong. 29% of respondents opted for ‘don’t know’.

A higher proportion thought the disciplinary action was wrong among Labour voters. Of those who backed the party in 2019, one in four (26%) stated it was wrong to suspend the former Labour leader compared to 41% who thought it was right.

The EHRC concluded on Thursday that Labour is responsible for three breaches of the Equality Act – relating to political interference in antisemitism complaints; failure to provide adequate training to those handling them; and harassment.

Corbyn issued a statement in response to the EHRC report, which claimed the “the scale of the [antisemitism] problem was also dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party”.

A Labour spokesperson subsequently announced that Corbyn had been suspended, and the Parliamentary Labour Party whip removed from the Labour MP, “in light of his comments made today and his failure to retract them”.

Several MPs and groups within the Labour Party, as well as trade union Unite leader Len McCluskey have argued that the suspension is wrong, and called on the Labour leader to reverse the disciplinary action taken against Corbyn.

Keir Starmer has this morning defended the move from the party as “appropriate” but argued that he does not want a “civil war”. He said: “That’s the right action – difficult, very difficult action but the right action, which I fully support.”