As the daily death rate edges closer to 1,000 YouGov finds strong support for a unity government to deal with the crisis
63% of Brits support a national unity government for the duration of the #covid19 crisis – including a majority (54%) of Conservative voters https://t.co/rSTOdNTVxP https://t.co/5iT8aOkAai
— YouGov (@YouGov) April 8, 2020
This latest polling which was published overnight is really quite remarkable and shows the impact of two things; the growing crisis and sense of helplessness as the lockdown looks set to go on and on and secondly how the political world has changed with Sir Kier Starmer now being Labour leader.
It would have been impossible to float such an idea while Corbyn was still there but his leadership is now history, politics has changed fundamentally and all this in less than a week.
Is this going to happen? Boris is reported to be making a reasonable recovery but the fact is that the prime minister is sidelined for the moment and can hardly be expected to take full responsibility while he’s seeking to ensure that he survives.
The interesting figure from the poll, and this should worry ministers is the proportion of Conservative voters, 54%, who are ready to countenance the idea with just 30% against. Labour now has a leader who in his honeymoon period at least is not seen as huge negative.
A danger for the Tories at this difficult time would be to be portrayed as playing politics when what the country desires is leadership that it can believe in to take us through to a return to normality.