Ed rated worst ever candidate for PM

…as the Tories take biggest lead for four years

ED Miliband last night declared ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ as a catastrophic poll showed he has crashed to the worst personal rating of any leader since records began. On the eve of a make- orbreak speech seeking to draw a line under his most turbulent period since beating brother David for the Labour leadership in 2010, he conceded his ‘mettle has been tested’ by ‘a difficult couple of weeks’.

The poll showed his personal ratings have collapsed to the lowest level for anyone running to be prime minister for 40 years.

Most worryingly for Labour, the poll also put the Tories three percentage points ahead – their biggest l ead f or f our years. Labour was on just 29 per cent, the supposed ‘core vote’ secured by Gordon Brown in 2010.

But Mr Miliband will insist today that he has the resilience to face his critics – while bizarrely blaming a shadowy network of establishment enemies for trying to undermine him.

He will declare he has the fight and belief to lead Labour to election victory next May and ‘change the country’.

‘We’re in a fight, but not because our opponents think we’re destined to lose. We are in a fight because they know we can win,’ he will say. ‘And between now and the election, they are going to use every tactic to try to throw us off course.’ Aides spoke of ‘powerful interests and political opponents’ they believe are seeking to prevent the Labour leader entering Downing street.

When asked who these ‘interests’ were, they referred to banks, hedge funds, energy companies and sections of the media.

Mr Miliband has endured a period of turmoil in recent weeks, with despairing MPs plotting privately to try to oust him.

A coup appears to have faltered after Alan Johnson, the former home secretary touted as a replacement l eader, said he would never accept the job.

Last night Mr Miliband said: ‘This job is a tough job and it should be a tough job. It’s an audition to be prime minister.

‘They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and that’s true and, you know, my mettle has been tested but people want a prime minister, want a leader of the Labour Party, who can come through tough times and will fight for them and that’s who I am.’ But jitters among Labour MPs will be increased by the poll showing Mr Miliband’s personal ratings are now worse even than Michael Foot, Labour’s least successful leader, at the same stage in the electoral cycle.

The Ipsos Mori survey found only 13 per cent of people think Mr Miliband is ready to run the country. Only 21 per cent are satisfied with his performance as leader, with 65 per cent dissatisfied, according to the poll for the London Evening standard newspaper. It means his net rating is minus 44 per cent, down ten points in a month.

Analysis of four decades of party leaders’ ratings six months before general elections shows no leader has ever been more unpopular at this stage.

Mr Foot, who won only 28 per cent of the vote against Margaret Thatcher’s Tories in 1983, had net satisfaction of minus 38 per cent at this stage.