Labour is haemorrhaging voters who backed the party at the last General Election as many would prefer Theresa May run the country rather than Jeremy Corbyn.
A YouGov poll found the Tories lead the official opposition by 12 points, the largest gap since Ms May’s party returned to government six years ago.
The Times newspaper, who commissioned the poll, said that means more than two and a half million people who voted Labour in last year’s general election think Ms May would make a better prime minister than their leader.
When those who voted Labour in last year’s election were asked to choose between the Conservative leader and Mr Corbyn as prime minister, 29 per cent opted for the former. This equates to 2.7 million Labour voters out of 9.3 million, the newspaper said.
Among voters generally, only 19 per cent believe that the Labour leader would make a better prime minister.
It comes as Owen Smith, the party’s challenger to Mr Corbyn for the top job, signalled a shift to the left in a bid to win support from radical party members.
The poll also found that Mrs May has started to attract some Ukip voters. It put the Tories on 40 per cent and Labour on 28 per cent, its lowest result under Mr Corbyn. Ukip was on 13 per cent and the Lib Dems on 8 per cent.
The commanding lead will pile pressure on the prime minister to consider an early election, although there is trepidation from some in her government about the possibility.
Patrick McLoughlin, the Tory chairman, played down the prospect of an early election at the weekend without ruling it out. He told the BBC that the Fixed-term Parliaments Act made that option “very difficult”.
Meanwhile, Mr Smith has vowed to borrow billions of pounds and create a “ministry of labour” to boost workers’ rights.
The measures from the former shadow work and pensions secretary were being seen as an attempt to prove his socialist credentials and dismiss claims that he is a “Blair-lite” candidate.
Mr Smith made increasingly personal attacks against Mr Corbyn and insisted that he was personally “massively to the left” of Tony Blair.
“Jeremy and Tony have got something in common; neither of them has been very forthright when it comes to really radical policies to change things,” he told the BBC.
“Jeremy has shared some of the traits of New Labour in that he’s not been bold enough. We have not put pen to paper on policy in almost any area in the last nine months.”
