Sir Keir Starmer has won over the northern voters Labour lost to the Tories in 2019, a new poll suggests.
The poll of 57 constituencies the Tories gained in the last General Election found 38% of voters agreed Sir Keir would make the best Prime Minister, while a majority doubt Boris Johnson will be in Downing Street this time next year.
Most of the areas are considered to be part of the ‘Red Wall’ – a political term for the traditional Labour heartlands in the Midlands, Wales and north of England.
The Deltapoll survey, for the Mail on Sunday, also put Labour in the lead when it came to the voting intention in those seats (49% vs 33%).
Meanwhile, it suggested Labour was ahead by five points nationwide (40% vs 35%).
If the results were repeated in a General Election, it could reportedly cost the Conservatives more than 100 seats.
This would be enough to win Sir Keir a spot in Downing Street, but leave him lacking a clear majority.
Voters in the seats gained by the Tories also preferred Sir Keir and shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves for their top team (40%), to Mr Johnson and Rishi Sunak (33%).
Asked if Mr Johnson was doing well in general, 34% agreed, while 62% disagreed – giving the PM a net rating of minus 28.
Sir Keir also received a negative score, but slightly higher, at minus 6.
The picture was even worse for the PM when voters in the 57 seats were quizzed on the pandemic. Only 32% thought he was doing well on Covid, while 62% disagreed.
Meanwhile, just 16% believed Mr Johnson had obeyed the rules, compared to 72% who did not.
A majority (65%) said the PM should resign if he was found to have broken the law over Covid restrictions.
Mr Sunak, on the other hand, proved more popular with these voters when it came to his pandemic performance – with 45% agreeing he had done well, compared to 40% who disagreed.
Looking forward to this time next year, just 24% of voters in the seats gained by the Tories thought Mr Johnson would still be in the top job.
A majority (58%) thought he would be replaced, and nearly three in four (74%) said they did not trust the PM to tell the truth.
Tory MP Lee Anderson, who gained his Ashfield seat from Labour in 2019, said some first-time Conservative voters were starting to have doubts.
He said the Government’s achievements were being soured by ‘the huge rises in the cost of living coming down the track, through higher energy bills, which my voters care far more about than the platitudes spouted about the “green agenda” by the wealthy elite who flew into the Cop26 summit in private planes’.
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