Enlarge imageBy Adrian Croft
LONDON (Reuters) - The Labour Party fell further behind the Conservatives in an opinion poll on Thursday, increasing pressure on Prime Minister Gordon Brown before a party conference at which he will fight for his job.
The Ipsos MORI poll showed the Conservative Party holding a 28-point lead over Labour, which would give it more than half the votes if a parliamentary election were held tomorrow.
Labour is consistently near 30-year lows in polls and its lack of popularity has been compounded by the global economic crisis, in which the nation’s largest savings group, HBOS, was taken over by Lloyds TSB in a 12.2 billion pound deal on Wednesday.
Unemployment rose last month by the biggest amount in 16 years, figures this week showed. Rising food and energy costs and slumping house prices have also stoked discontent with Labour’s 11 years in office.
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Brown’s declining fortunes, 15 months since he replaced Tony Blair without a leadership contest, have led to calls from members of his own party to quit. Dissenters want a different leader to take them into the next election, due by mid-2010.
Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, rallied behind Brown and backed his replacement as chancellor, Alistair Darling, who has led attempts to rein in the financial and banking turmoil.
"The prime minister and the chancellor (Darling) have been focusing quite rightly on the ways to help people going through a difficult economic time," Smith told GMTV television.
Asked if Brown should call a leadership contest and take on the party’s dissenters, she replied: "No."
But despite support from Smith and other cabinet ministers in recent days, the latest poll figures are likely to fuel the revolt by Labour rebels before the party’s annual decision-making conference starting on Saturday.
The poll found 52 percent of those who said they would definitely vote at the next election backed the Conservatives. Labour was unchanged at 24 percent.
"FED UP WITH BROWN"
Julia Clark, head of political research at Ipsos MORI, said it was the highest Conservative score since the monthly tracker poll began in 1979. She said it was very unlikely Brown could recover from such a big deficit before the next election.
"The public are so fed up with Labour right now, they are sick with Gordon Brown," she told Reuters.
The Ipsos MORI poll found 69 percent of people were unhappy with the way Brown was doing his job and 70 percent thought the economy would worsen in the next year.
Thirty-six percent thought the Conservatives had the best understanding of Britain’s economic problems, compared with 27 percent for Labour.
Brown, 57, was chancellor for a decade and used to promote his economic competence as his greatest strength.
Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell, regarded as a potential leadership contender, refused to condemn the rebels in an interview published on Thursday although he said he did not agree with what they had done.
Purnell told the left-wing New Statesman magazine it would be "ridiculous to pretend that you can’t complain when you’re worried. I mean, I’m worried that we’re 20 points behind."
The backing of at least 71 Labour members of parliament is needed to force a party leadership contest and only a dozen rebels have so far broken cover. The rebels hope the pressure will encourage cabinet members to persuade Brown to step aside.
Voters may, however, find it hard to accept another change of prime ministers without a parliamentary election.
(Writing by Luke Baker, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
