For all TMay’s travails she continues to have a clear lead over Corbyn as “best PM”
JC’s heady days of last June are becoming a distant memory
Back in June, after Corbyn’s LAB got 4 seats closer to the Tory MP total than Gordon Brown’s party seven years earlier, there was a massive euphoria around the Labour leader. He could do no wrong and was reported to have said he expected to be PM by last Christmas. That, of course, didn’t happen and he then revised that to Christmas 2018.
Then, in its first poll immediately after the election, Corbyn went into the lead over TMay as best Best PM. A week and a half later the pollster had them level pegging on this measure a result that was to be repeated in the first YouGov after TMay’s less than successful party conference speech.
Apart from that the pollster has mostly had clear leads for Mrs May although the proportion of don’t knows is very high and one occasion in December “No one of the above” was the preferred choice.
Sure LAB has had minute leads in the majority of voting intention surveys but the party has not got even close to what EdM’s LAB was doing in the polls in the 2010-2015 parliament.
Given this and Labour continuing to trail badly on the economy the conventional thinking is that that is not an election winning position.
Yet TMay continues to be the leader thought to be in most trouble. Corbyn continues to benefit within the movement from GE2017 not being the total disaster that some were predicting. Memories, though, can fade with time.