Poll: Margaret Thatcher Only Former PM Broadly Trusted to Lead Brexit

A poll has put the late Margaret Thatcher in a wide lead as the British prime minister from recent history that people would trust to lead Brexit negotiations.

YouGov asked Britons, “If you could choose one British Prime Minister from the last thirty years to be leading Brexit negotiations, who would it be?” with respondents putting the Iron Lady, who was the Conservative prime minister from 1979 to 1990, at 44 per cent.

The poll published Monday put former New Labour and avowed Euro-fanatic Tony Blair in second at 12 per cent — just over a quarter of the support given to Baroness Thatcher — while the rest of the prime ministers had support in the single digits.

Labour’s Gordon Brown had six per cent, while both former Tory prime ministers and Remain supporters John Major and David Cameron garnered four per cent, with the current Conservative prime minister, Theresa May, languishing on two per cent.

Earlier this month Mrs Thatcher was voted in another YouGov poll as the country’s greatest post-World War Two prime minister, this recent poll further bolstering the perspective of the high esteem the British people held for the Falklands War-era leader.

However, Monday’s poll does not bode well for the future of the Conservative Party, given that recent polling has seen the Tories slip from third place ahead of European Parliament elections to fifth while Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party has been holding first place solidly for a number of weeks.

The party also suffered its worst local election results in nearly a quarter of a century earlier this month, losing more than 1,300 council seats as voters expressed their frustration at Mrs May failing to deliver Brexit.

Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ), the Tory Party machine, fears that the European Parliament election on Thursday will push them into sixth place, with recent polling analysis pointing to more than half of those who voted for the Conservative Party in 2017’s General Election switching allegiance to the Brexit Party.

On the campaign trail, Mr Farage has said that the results of the European Parliament election will usher in “a new future for British democracy” and dismantle the two-party system dominated by the right and left establishment.