68 per cent say Smith would make a better Prime Minister than Corbyn
Owen Smith would make a better Labour Party leader and Prime Minister than Jeremy Corbyn, according to a BMG poll for the Evening Standard.
Fifty-eight per cent of the public said Smith would make a better party leader, 16 points ahead of Corbyn at 42.
When asked who would make the best Prime Minister, 62 per cent said Smith, against 38 per cent for Corbyn – a lead for Smith of 24 points.
The poll comes after 84 per cent of local Labour Party groups came out in favour of Corbyn. 285 constituency parties voted to support corbyn in the leader race compared to just 53 for rival Smith.
Recent polling has been dire for Labour, with 2.7 million Labour voters saying they prefer Theresa May as Prime Minister over Jeremy Corbyn, and the Tories leading by up to 14 points.
Today’s BMG poll found little difference in how likely people are to turnout to vote in 2020 with either Smith or Corbyn in post. The result was also split among those who voted Labour in 2015’s general election by 51 to 49 for Corbyn.
However, there was a large generational difference in support for the two, with 57 per cent of under-24s backing Corbyn versus 21 per cent of over-65s.
The two candidates have been busy campaiging, with Owen Smith warning of a secret Tory plan to privatise the NHS, promising a yearly 4 per cent increase in the NHS budget, and Corbyn proposing a ‘National Education Service’ for training and skills, and calling for nationalising railways and bus services.
Corbyn and Smith will cross swords tomorrow in a televised hustings event on the BBC’s Victory Derbyshire programme at 9am.
See: Diane Abbott: Jeremy Corbyn’s vision can win a general election
See: I founded a Momentum branch – but will be supporting Owen Smith
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13 Responses to “Owen Smith leads Jeremy Corbyn by 24 points in BMG poll of public”
Dave Stewart
So the public think Smith (who I doubt many of them know anything about) would be a better PM but when asked how they would vote it makes little to no difference whether Smith or Corbyn is in charge. That kind of suggests that the problem isn’t Corbyn but the incredibly sad way that the Labour party has been conducting itself of late which is causing the problems in the polls.
Abdel Abubakr
God for you Mr. Smith. However, myself and the people I know are supporting the democratically elected current Leader of the Labour Party with a huge majority which never happened before in any British Political Party almost about one year ago. How many people in the Labour Party, in the United Kingdom or the whole world would have expected a coupe against such Leader in such a.short interval of time? I really wonder
Robert
Tickles me a Poll says the public thinks, sadly the public unless members will not get a vote, and Smith is looking more and more like a copy cat . I doubt I will be voting for any of them at the next election but if I did it would not be the false Smith. Every day he comes out with something new, now he wants to back up ISIS as if they were the same as the IRA.
Eric Tranter
But then the General Public are not voting in our Leadership Election. Once JC is reelected with an even greater mandate and a new Shadow Cabinet formed then we can begin the recovery of our great Labour Party.
Max Tasker
My God You must be desperate to try to bullshit us with this nonsense. Thank God we have access to the internet so we can see through it