'Record low support for Labour'

Updated 23.21 Fri May 30 2008

Keywords: Gordon Brown, YouGov, David Cameron, Labour, Conservatives

A new opinion poll claims that Labour has slipped to its worst rating since records began in 1943.

The YouGov poll for the Daily Telegraph puts Gordon Brown's popularity among voters at the same level as Sir John Major's at his lowest point and worse than Michael Foot.

Only 15 per cent of those surveyed were satisfied with Mr Brown - the same as during the worst years of the Major administration in the early 1990s

The poll - the first since Mr Brown's Crewe and Nantwich by-election drubbing - puts Labour on 23 points and the Conservatives on 47.

In the last month Labour has fallen three points and the Tories have risen three points. The Liberal Democrats are on 18 points.

When asked who would make the best Prime Minister, 39 per cent of those polled said Tory leader David Cameron, a rise of 7 per cent on last month. Mr Brown's rating fell 2 per cent from April to 17 per cent.

Only 15 per cent of those surveyed were satisfied with Mr Brown - the same as during the worst years of the Major administration in the early 1990s.

Meanwhile, it has emerged that Mr Brown has taken to "cold calling" members of the general public in a move to help restore his declining popularity. Newspapers claim he has made as many as two dozen such calls up to now.

While Downing Street officials insist it is not a new initiative, media reports said the idea had come from his newly-appointed strategy chief Stephen Carter, a former public relations boss who wants to "humanise" his new boss.

Some of Mr Brown's critics have given him until Labour's annual conference in September to pull the party out of the doldrums.

His supporters hope the economy will ride out the turmoil created by external factors such as high oil and food prices and the global credit crunch in time for the next election.