Sir Keir Starmer should sack Rachel Reeves as Chancellor because she is not up to the job, an exclusive poll of voters has found.
A total of 43 per cent think Ms Reeves should be removed from the Treasury, while just 19 per cent think she should stay in post to deliver the autumn Budget – when she is expected to hike taxes again to fill a widening black hole in the economy.
The research, by former Conservative deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft, found that even many Labour voters – more than one in five – want the Prime Minister to fire his Chancellor.
Business leaders and economists have warned that many firms are being pushed to the brink as they struggle to absorb higher National Insurance payments, with the costs being passed on to customers in the form of surging prices.
The poll also finds that nearly four in ten voters, 39 per cent, think Sir Keir’s Government is doing worse than the last Tory government, while only 23 per cent think that it is doing better.
They are split on whether Sir Keir will still be in No 10 in a year’s time, with 35 per cent thinking that he will and 34 per cent that he will have been replaced or quit.
The figures are even worse for Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, with only 20 per cent expecting her to be leader in a year.
A whopping 59 per cent think Nigel Farage will still be leader of Reform UK.
Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick receives strong support for his Mail on Sunday article this month, in which he said high migration made him fear for his daughters’ safety – 55 per cent say it was legitimate for him to say he didn’t want his children ‘to share a neighbourhood with men from backward countries who broke into Britain illegally and about whom we know next to nothing’.
Amid ongoing diplomatic efforts to strike a peace deal in Ukraine, Lord Ashcroft found that only 14 per cent think that Kyiv should accept Russian occupation as part of a peace deal; a total of 52 per cent do not.
The peer writes in today’s MoS: ‘My poll finds a huge majority of voters saying they are pessimistic for the future of the country, including nearly two thirds of those who backed Labour last year.
‘Only half of last year’s Labour voters think this Government is any better than the last one, and people are as likely as not to think Starmer will be gone by this time next year – an extraordinary position for a PM who walked into No 10 only last July with a majority of 174.’
