Cameron faces growing demand to reshuffle his cabinet
Prime Minister David Cameron is coming under increasing pressure after a poll was released on Sunday which put the Tories and Cameron at their lowest approval rating in years.
The poll, carried out by Opinium for The Observer, placed the Tories with only 27%, and UKIP again making sizeable gains on 17% – a gap of just 10 points between the two right-wing parties, which would have been unthinkable before the Eastleigh by-election.
To exacerbate Cameron’s woes, his personal rating, which has held up surprisingly well despite his party’s tumble in the polls, collapsed by 8 points from 26% down to 18%. Cameron still has the support of most senior party members.
Senior Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Baroness Warsi, told Sky News: “Question marks about who should lead a party at any one time happens in all political parties at all times…but what is very clear from the Conservative Party is that there is a huge amount of support behind the Prime Minister.”
However, Cameron’s support is far less assured amongst the more right-wing Tory backbenchers. Conservative MP Sarah Wallaston has written a piece in The Telegraph calling for Cameron to rethink his inner-circle.
She said he is still “far more popular than that tiny cabal of right-wing back bench agitators”, but called for him to make changes if he wants to lead the Tories to victory in 2015’s general election.
Wallaston added that “time is running out for Cameron to build a team which shows he understands the public’s distaste for elites.”
The prospect of a complete cabinet reshuffle still seems unlikely in the extreme, given that Cameron already shuffled his pack in September 2012. But something certainly needs to change if the Tories are to make up all the ground they are losing to UKIP and Labour in the polls.
Joe Turnbull
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