Exclusive

— Rishi Sunak is now polling **worse than Liz Truss** with the key voters who decided the last election

— Sunak has presided over a “year of decline” that’s caused an “implosion” in the Tory vote, according to a major study by @JLPartnersPollshttps://t.co/flTxtASNVI

— Alex Wickham (@alexwickham) December 4, 2023

*Sunak is doing worse than the Tory polling nadir*

— just 59% of voters who backed the Tories under Boris Johnson are sticking with them under Sunak

— that’s down from 74% in Aug 2022

— and even worse than 63% after Truss’ mini-budgethttps://t.co/flTxtASNVI

— Alex Wickham (@alexwickham) December 4, 2023

— Sunak’s faltering performance in recent weeks is evident in the deep-dive of polls by @JLPartnersPolls

— they say the Tories have lost a net 520,000 votes *since* Sunak’s speech at Tory conference at the beginning of Octoberhttps://t.co/flTxtATlLg

— Alex Wickham (@alexwickham) December 4, 2023

Here is the @JLPartnersPolls report “Implosion in Blue” if you want to read in full >> https://t.co/FMxJNljCJo

— Alex Wickham (@alexwickham) December 4, 2023

The answer, of course, to the question in the headline is no, but it does increase pressure on Sunak if he now seen worse than Liz Truss with key voters, this is a long term trend, as Bloomberg observe

Just 59% of voters who backed the Conservatives under Boris Johnson at the 2019 election are sticking with the party under Sunak, the report found. That’s down from 74% in August 2022, and from 63% in the aftermath of Truss’s disastrous “mini-budget” in September 2022, which roiled markets and brought about the abrupt end of her premiership. That event had been seen as the polling nadir for the governing Tory party.

The problem for the Tories is that there is no one who is going to improve the Tories much.

Lettuce woman is a figure of fun and the country isn’t in the mood for laughs, Boris Johnson has a few hurdles to even become an MP, and deep down he knows his premiership would be over within seconds. Back in October 2022 he had the nominations to stand in the second Tory leadership election of 2022 and win with the members but enough Tory MPs wouldn’t serve under him and he couldn’t have a functioning government.

Plus his ratings are worse than Jeremy Corbyn’s ratings at the 2019 general election, and things would get worse when the full stories about his lies about partygate and also the lies about putting a known sexual predator in a position of authority then lying about it, he would have been ousted again.

In short the Tories as buggered as Zanzibar at 8:59 on the morning of the 27th of August 1896, I suspect the swingback alluded to with the undecideds will not help prevent a loss.

TSE