LABOUR has the “fight of our lives on our hands,” a senior aide to Jeremy Corbyn has admitted, as a poll gave the party leader his lowest personal net rating of -42.
In the noisiest and possibly last head-to-head confrontation of the entire General Election campaign, Theresa May insisted her Labour counterpart was “simply not up to the job” of being Prime Minister while Mr Corbyn insisted strong leadership was about “standing up for the many, not the few” and accused her of being “strong against the weak and weak against the strong”.
An Ipsos Mori poll found 61 per cent of UK voters saw Mrs May as the "most capable" party leader as against 23 per cent for Mr Corbyn; this was better than that of Margaret Thatcher, 48 per cent, and Tony Blair, 51 per cent.
Meantime, a YouGov snapshot of 1,674 people across the UK gave the PM a +10 personal rating, up four points on February, while the Labour leader was down two on -42.
The pollster said nearly two thirds of people – 64 per cent - now had an unfavourable view of the London MP compared to just 22 per cent who held a favourable view. It pointed out how Mr Corbyn had a net negative rating among every single demographic group; even among those who voted Labour in the 2015 election, where his rating was at -10.
Appearing in the series for the first time, Nicola Sturgeon came in with a net UK rating of -36 with 23 per cent having a favourable opinion of her compared to 59 per cent who had a negative opinion.
However among the albeit small Scottish sample of 155 people, the First Minister’s rating was +14; 51 per cent favourable and 37 per cent unfavourable. Mr Corbyn’s Scottish numbers were 24 and 57, providing a rating of -33, while Mrs May’s were 33 and 55, a rating of -22.
The Labour leader’s aide said it was a “very volatile political period” and that polling had had a “pretty chequered record recently”.
However, he then admitted: “We have the fight of our lives on our hands.”
The aide added that the election gave Labour the opportunity to put across its policies in a “less mediated way,” and that when it spoke about its policies more directly, “there will be definitely be a change in Labour support”.
In the final PMQs of this Parliament, Mrs May repeatedly emphasised the issue of “strong and stable leadership” – 16 times – and claimed the Labour leader would fail in his first duty of keeping the country safe.
"The plan to disband MI5, to disarm our police and to scrap our nuclear deterrent was endorsed by his policy chief and even by his Shadow Chancellor. Again at the weekend, we saw him refusing to say he would strike against terrorism, refusing to commit to our nuclear deterrent and refusing to control our borders. Keeping a country safe is the first duty of a prime minister. He is simply not up to the job," declared the PM.
Later, Mr Corbyn’s office described Mrs May’s claims as “nonsense” and accused her of “recycling fake news”.
But when it was suggested Mr McDonnell had posed for a picture holding up the controversial pledges, the aide said: “As he made clear at the time, he thought he was holding something else up.”
He added: “We have made clear we support strong security service funding to deal with the terrorist threat and other threats; that’s been made clear by Jeremy and John McDonnell.”
In other developments:
*the PM was accused of ignoring Muslim voters by scheduling election during Ramadan; Muslim politicians from Labour and SNP fear reduced voter turnout among Muslims;
*Labour announced its NHS plan for England, including a pay rise for "undervalued, overworked and underpaid" NHS staff, paid for by reversing cuts to corporation tax, although the Tories insisted Labour had already used this method to fund 12 other commitments while the SNP claimed it was the “only party standing up for the NHS”;
*the Nationalists attacked Mrs May for heading into the election with the "immoral” rape clause policy in place;
*Andrew Gwynne, Labour’s campaign co-ordinator let slip the date of his party’s manifesto launch - May 15 and
*Gisela Stuart, one of Labour's leading Brexit supporters, accused her party of making itself "irrelevant".
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