Labour now 25 points clear of Tories as mortgage rates batter Rishi Sunak’s party

By Ben Lucas

Labour has posted its biggest lead over the Conservatives since March, new polling data has revealed, as the public grows increasingly tired of the government’s perceived mismanagement of the economy.

Labour’s vote share jumped four points to 47 per cent, giving the opposition party a 25 point lead over the Tories, according to fresh polling data by YouGov.

The Conservative Party’s vote share dipped two points to 22 per cent, according to the data, which surveyed nearly 2,300 UK adults voting intentions between June 20 and 21. This is the party’s worst result since February.

The latest polling also found that three quarters of Brits think the government is handling the economy badly – up 4 points from the proportion of people who said so last week.

It comes after inflation failed to come down in May, staying at 8.7 per cent, which, along with other factors, forced the Bank of England to haul interest rate up by 50 bps to five per cent on Thursday.

The move is expected to heap even greater pain onto mortgage holders in the UK, with an average two year mortgage now over six per cent.

The move forced Chancellor Jeremy Hunt on Friday to announcenew measures to help mortgage holders after emergency talks with the chiefs of the UK’s biggest high-street banks, with lenders agreeing to wait at least 12 months before repossessing homes of borrowers that fall behind on payments.

The policy goes further than Labour’s proposed plan to address the problem, which only sought to make lenders wait six months before initiating repossession proceedings.

But as both parties battle it out to prove they can steer the economy away from a mortgage crisis, it is Keir Starmer who comes out as more trusted to run the economy than Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

The latest YouGov polling found that just under a third (31 per cent) of Brits trust a Labour government led by Starmer to run the economy, which was 11 points higher than the proportion who trust Sunak and the Conservatives.