Johnson Trails in Opinion Poll as Virus Policies Anger Britons
Johnson Trails in Opinion Poll as Virus Policies Anger Britons
(Bloomberg) -- Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party trails the main opposition Labour Party in an opinion poll for the first time in months, with half of those surveyed saying they disapprove of how government has handled the coronavirus crisis.
According to an Opinium survey for the Observer, a left-leaning newspaper, Keir Starmer’s Labour rose 3 points to 42% with Johnson’s party dropping by the same amount to 39%. At the end of March, soon after the government imposed a lockdown on the economy and four months after winning the election in a landslide, the Conservatives had 54% support.
While the survey comes years before the country is obliged to hold a general election, it’s a reminder that Johnson’s administration has become bogged down in a series of missteps, some of its own making.
Thousands of protesters, some with placards such as “This is tyranny,” took to the streets of central London on Saturday, angered by the government’s expansion of coronavirus restrictions.
Meanwhile, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak’s latest economic measures received a mixed response from the hospitality industry, and Brexit talks are set to enter their final round of formal negotiations, just as the government warns that huge lines of trucks could blight the southeastern corner of England from Jan. 1 in a post-Brexit logistics nightmare.
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