Labour takes lead in the polls in wake of Tory sleaze scandals
Labour has taken the lead in two major polls amid the Tory second jobs and sleaze row that has engulfed Westminster.
Labour leads the Conservatives by 37 to 36 per cent in today’s Observer/Opinium poll, while a Savanta ComRes survey two days ago gave Sir Keir Starmer’s party a 6 per cent lead.
The Opinium poll had Johnson ahead as preferred prime minister by one percentage point over Starmer.
It comes as transport secretary Grant Shapps and House of Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg were today dragged into the ongoing scandal over Tory MPs’ outside interests.
The Sunday Times revealed that Shapps, a passionate recreational flyer, had intervened in government decisions to stop housing developments on former airfields after lobbying from interest groups.
The Mail on Sunday revealed that Rees-Mogg had not declared £6m of loans taken out through one of his companies.
“This is our first Labour lead since January but the red and blue lines have slowly been edging towards each since the end of the government’s vaccine bounce in May,” Opinium’s Adam Drummond said.
“While the various sleaze stories dominating front pages and have undoubtedly damaged the government, Johnson’s personal poll rating has been falling for some time, and the Conservative’s lead on ‘running the economy’ has shrunk considerably.”
The government and Tory backbenchers teamed up last week to veto Paterson’s recommended 30-day suspension, for acting as a £100,000-a-year lobbyist for two firms, and dismantle parliament’s disciplinary processes in a series of votes.
Number 10 was forced to quickly backtrack in the face of public pressure and Paterson resigned shortly after.
The saga has launched a myriad of stories into sleaze and corruption on the Tory backbenches as a growing group of MPs come under scrutiny for having paid jobs outside parliament.
Former attorney general Geoffrey Cox has been in the eye of the media storm this week, after it was revealed that he had made hundreds of thousands of pounds for giving legal advice to the British Virgin Islands on a corruption case that has been brought forward by the UK government.
City PM exclusively revealed on Thursday that Rugby Conservative MP Mark Pawsey, who gets paid £30,000 a year to chair a UK packaging lobby, has spoken in parliament to call for looser environmental laws to benefit plastics producers.