2 in 3 Labour voters want to ditch Ed for his brother David
TWO out of three Labour voters want to ditch party leader Ed Miliband in favour of his brother David, a poll revealed last night. The news comes as Mr Miliband today tries to regain Labour’s economic credibility at the party’s annual conference after Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls vowed to review every item of public expenditure if Labour wins the next election.
But the new poll showed that just one in four voters believes Mr Miliband is the right man to revive economic prospects, that 67 per cent of all voters think his party ‘chose the wrong brother’, and that 65 per cent of Labour voters say David Miliband would do a better job.
Ed Miliband’s unpopularity threatens to overshadow Labour’s economic relaunch, which is designed to show that the party is serious about tackling Britain’s debts.
Mr Balls said yesterday: ‘The public want to know that we are going to be ruthless and disciplined in how we go about public spending.
‘It is quite right, and the public I think would expect this, to have a proper zerobased spending review where we say we have to justify every penny and make sure we are spending in the right way.’
But he said Labour would not reveal the review results until a year after taking power and would protect budgets in areas such as health and development.
As Tory officials revealed they will personally target Mr Miliband in the run up to the election, David Cameron said: ‘What Labour are basically saying is, “Elect us to government and then we will have a spending review”.’
The Prime Minister added: ‘It’s the most unbelievably irresponsible thing. They have learnt absolutely nothing over these last few years. They have opposed every single cut. They are effectively saying, “We messed up the economy, we got you into debt, let us back into power and we will think about it”. It is an absurd notion.’
The Populus poll of 2,036 voters, commissioned by the Tories, supports this, with 64 per cent agreeing that ‘Labour’s only idea for the economy is more borrowing and more spending, which is one of the ways we got into this mess in the first place’.
Some 63 per cent agree that ‘Labour just oppose everything the Government is doing to deal with the deficit and turn the country around, but never put forward any policies of their own’. But Mr Miliband will today describe the downturn as an ‘economic emergency’ that will only be tackled by the sort of national effort that took place in the years after the Second World War.
At Labour’s conference in Manchester, he will say: ‘For millions of families, the prospects feel bleaker now than for 50 years, since the Second World War.
‘And we will need the same spirit to overcome this crisis as Britain showed then and in our gravest moments through history: The same spirit, the same determination, the same sense of national mission.
‘Whoever wins the next election will be faced with a huge deficit. We will not be able to reverse all the cuts.’
But he will spell out plans to prioritise public spending that favours the less welloff, saying: ‘We will take decisions about priorities like putting jobs ahead of pay rises. Don’t believe those who say that all politicians are the same. Because our decisions will be different. We would always put the interests of millions of working people ahead of tax cuts for millionaires.’
But 73 per cent of people, including almost half of Labour voters (46 per cent) said he ‘just doesn’t have what it takes to be prime minister’. More than six in ten floating voters said they would be more likely to back Labour if it ditched him in favour of a ‘stronger’ leader.
Only 17 per cent of voters see Mr Miliband as a natural leader and just 18 per cent consider him to be charismatic.
A senior Tory source said: ‘These findings show Ed Miliband faces serious questions over his leadership. He has a lot of work to do to persuade people he has got what it takes to be prime minister.’ Miliband’s attack on ‘rip-off’ pension funds – Page 20 Simon Heffer – Page 47