Brown bounce looking shaky
Friday, 9 January 2009 5:20 PM
By Ian Dunt
Gordon Brown's bounce in the polls has received its first setback, with two new polls showing the Tory lead growing.
A ComRes poll of leading businessmen for the Independent shows perilously low levels of trust for Labour's anti-recession policies.
Meanwhile, a YouGov poll for the Sun gives the Tories a seven-point lead over Labour.
Just 28 per cent of the ComRes respondents said they were confident in the prime minister's abilities. That figure was down from 42 per cent last October.
The main source of concern appears to come from chancellor Alistair Darling's overly optimistic assessment of how long the recession would last.
Only 16 per cent of business leaders surveyed said they had confidence in Mr Darling, down from 25 per cent last October.
The surveys come during a ceaseless flow of bad economic news for the UK.
Nissan cut 1,200 jobs yesterday in their Sunderland plant. Meanwhile, the Bank of England cut interest rates to 1.5 per cent, the lowest level in its history.
The Independent survey also showed trust for the Conservative team of leader David Cameron and shadow chancellor George Osborne considerably higher than that for Labour.
Mr Cameron had a confidence rating of 46 per cent among the 200 business leaders, while Mr Osborne - who has still not quite recovered from the Corfu affair - earned 26 per cent.
Of the three main parties, Vince Cable is the man most trusted with the Treasury brief, earning a confidence rating of 41 per cent.
But his party leader, Nick Clegg, does worst out of all three leaders, with just 11 per cent confidence.]
Following the polls bookmakers William Hill made Gordon Brown their favourite to be the first of the three party leaders to leave office.
"Mr Brown has been heavily backed to be the first of the three to go and we have had to cut his odds from 6/4 to 5/4," said Hill's spokesman Graham Sharpe.
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