Brexit Party Has More Support Than Britain's Main Parties: Poll
The party, fronted by Nigel Farage and founded only last month, would take 34% of the vote in the May 23 election.
(Bloomberg) -- The Brexit Party has more support in the U.K. ahead of this month’s EU elections than the Conservatives and Labour combined, according to an Opinium survey for the Observer newspaper.
The party, fronted by Nigel Farage and founded only last month, would take 34% of the vote in the May 23 election, compared with 21% for Labour and just 11% for Theresa May’s Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats would get 12%.
A separate poll by the same organization, asking how people would vote in the event of a general election, also makes grim reading for May’s administration. The Conservatives, on 22%, trail Labour in that survey by six percentage points and lead the Brexit party by just one point.
Another survey, by the Conservative Home website and published in the Times, suggested three in five Tory members were planning to back Farage’s group in the EU vote.
And the Telegraph, which has long backed the idea of a hard Brexit, published a letter from 600 assorted Conservatives from the shires in which they warn that if May can’t deliver a clean departure from the EU, members of Parliament should replace her or “risk disaster.”
May and Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn are scheduled to hold more talks next week to try to find a Brexit compromise, but getting any deal through Parliament will be tough.
One of the main claims made by Farage, formerly of the right-wing UK Independence Party (UKIP), is that millions of Britons would desert the two main parties for the new Brexit Party if May and Corbyn reach a consensus.
To contact the reporter on this story: James Ludden in New York at jludden@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Matthew G. Miller at mmiller144@bloomberg.net, Ros Krasny
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