BRITAIN:Prime minister in waiting Gordon Brown is failing to persuade the public that he would make a better prime minister than David Cameron, according to an ICM poll published today in the Guardian, which suggests the Tories could win a working majority at the next election.
Voters give the Tories a clear 13-point lead when asked which party they would back in a likely contest between Mr Brown, Mr Cameron and Sir Menzies Campbell. The result would give the party 42 per cent of the vote against Labour's 29 per cent, similar to its performance under Michael Foot in 1983. The Liberal Democrats would drop to 17 per cent. The result is the highest the Conservatives have scored in any ICM poll since July 1992.
The question, which names all three major party leaders, asks voters to think about politics in a different way from the standard ICM question about voting intentions, which only names parties.
The poll was carried out last weekend, after reports about Mr Cameron's use of cannabis at school and suggestions in some quarters that he had used hard drugs. The poll also follows the publication of a photograph of him dressed as a member of Oxford University's exclusive Bullingdon dining club, which prompted suggestions that the Tory leader, an old Etonian, would be seen as a toff who could afford dress up in £1,000 jackets. - ( Guardian service)