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Blair popularity plummets
10/05/2006 08:10 - (SA)
London - British Prime Minister Tony Blair ranks as the most unpopular Labour prime minister since the 1960s, according to an opinion poll in Wednesday's Daily Telegraph newspaper.
Just 26% of respondents to the YouGov poll said they were satisfied by Blair's performance - one percentage point down from where Harold Wilson stood in May 1968 after a devaluation of pound sterling.
The survey also indicated that support for the main opposition Conservatives is running at 37%, against 31% for Labour and 17% for the smaller Liberal Democrats.
Despite a rash of scandals in his nine-year-old government, Blair refused calls on Monday to name a precise date when he will stand down in favour of Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown.
Unprecedented 3rd term
But he signalled that would give his successor "ample time" to settle into Downing Street before the next general election, which must be held by May 2010 - language that some analysts interpreted as his intention to go in mid-2007.
YouGov's findings for the Daily Telegraph, a staunch editorial supporter of the Conservatives, reinforced an opinion poll in the more Labour-friendly Times newspaper on Tuesday which put Labour at its lowest ebb since 1992.
Five months after Labour swept to power in May 1997, Blair's satisfaction rating reached 83% - and despite the unpopular Iraq war he was able to lead Labour to an unprecedented third straight term a year ago.
YouGov questioned 1 910 people online on Monday and Tuesday.
Blair's government has been buffeted by revelations that more than 1 000 convicted foreign criminals held in British prisons were not considered for deportation after their release.
His deputy prime minister John Prescott has been humiliated by news that he carried on an extra-marital affair with a secretary in his office, while police are investigating whether peerages were given to rich political donors.
Britain's best-selling Sun newspaper reported on Wednesday that Blair is offering Brown a "draft deal" in which he would promise to quit at the Labour Party annual conference in September 2007.
Brown, co-architect with Blair of Labour's shift to the political centre, but clearly frustrated by the prime minister's refusal to move on, would in return give Blair's public sector reform agenda "his full support", it said.
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