‘Abrasive’ Truss turns off floating voters who backed Tories at last general election, YouGov focus group says
On Thursday, the day after the end of the conference season, YouGov hosted a focus group with seven Blue Wall voters from around the South East exclusively for Sky News.
Some natural Conservatives, some former Tony Blair supporters, all with one thing in common: each voted Tory in the 2019 general election. Now their votes are up for grabs.
Here’s what our floating voter focus group found:
None said they were certain to vote Tory at the next election
Of the seven strong group, all of whom voted for Boris Johnson, none were prepared to say they would definitely vote Tory next time. Just one participant of the focus group confirmed they were more likely than not to back Liz Truss’s party next time around – suggesting plenty of doubts are harboured by the rest.
Several in the group were not wildly enthusiastic about the alternative – a Labour government – but felt it was now the default for the country given a profound concern at the existing team in power.
Stephanie, a solicitor, declared: “Do I think she (Truss) can do it? No. I don’t think she has the skills, the experience or the team behind her, and they’re all fighting against themselves.”
The group didn’t appear to think a month ago they would dislike Liz Truss – with Phyllis, an admirer of Margaret Thatcher, saying she started out believing the new PM would be better than Boris Johnson. But the decisions Truss has made in her first four weeks in power have left a profound impact on these voters.
Voters worry the Truss plans are dangerous
The focus group demonstrated just how closely voters had been paying attention to the succession of announcements by the new government, and have taken fright at the change of direction by Truss.
“In order for her plans to take place, it requires an enormous amount of borrowing and that’s putting up interest rates,” said Jane, a hospital inspector. “So, we’re potentially bankrupting the country. What Liz Truss is proposing is very reckless. I don’t think this is the time we should be experimental.”
Phyllis, a cashier, said that Truss was “going in too hard” with her plans without being in touch. Others worried what it would mean in practice.
David, who is retired, said that “you can’t just say growth, growth, growth. What’s the plan behind that?” Only one member of the group, Patrick, was positive and suggested he admired her bravery.
Voters do not warm to Truss’s personality
Just one of the seven members of our focus group at the end of the session voted to say they trust Liz Truss. Even that one backer, Patrick, volunteered that he felt she had less energy, was more like a “schoolteacher” and the “delivery wasn’t there” but liked the core Conservative messages she espouses.
The group did not see her as a unifying figure. Paul, a former local government officer, said she was “very abrasive” in her conference speech. He highlighted her childhood going on CND marches, saying she’s “taking it out” now on the Greenpeace protesters who interrupted the speech.
Jane, a mother of twins, suggested her attack on the “anti-growth coalition” was actually divisive. “I find her a very uncomfortable (watch),” while Jasmine who worked in the financial services industry suggested Truss is at her most passionate when she is attacking others.
These southern swing voters are edging cautiously towards Labour
Three of the seven said they were likely to vote Labour at the next election. Two further members of the group had not made up their mind. For a party which has in recent times struggled to get disaffected Tory voters to consider Labour, this is a good result.
Keir Starmer was described as the “lesser of two evils” by one member of the focus group, most of whom felt the Labour leader currently has the political edge.
David, who worked as an auditor, said that it is now “inevitable” there will be a Labour government – a sense of inevitability is often politically advantageous for a political party. There was not unalloyed enthusiasm, however.
Keir Starmer remains damaged by the Corbyn years and fears of a lurch to the left
These southern Blue Wall voters were still worried by what they saw as the stain of the Corbyn years. Jane said she voted for Boris Johnson in 2019 because of Jeremy Corbyn and antisemitism.
Patrick, who works in the rail industry, highlighted how many of the shadow cabinet served under Jeremy Corbyn.
David said that while Keir Starmer knows he needs to have centrist policies to be electable, “I’m very worried that because of the makeup of the Labour Parliamentary Party, he’ll be under huge pressure to move to the left in government”.
There were concerns for many in the group that a Labour government could mean more strikes: just one, Paul, who worked in local government, said that inflation could mean in some cases they were justified.
Many in Westminster may see Starmer as having cut ties with much of the Corbyn era – the public are not so clear about the difference.
Voters aren’t yet convinced Keir Starmer is strong enough
The Labour leader was seen as honest, decent and a good salesman by most members of the group. But there remains a lingering concern over whether he is tough enough to take on his party if they demand he lurch to the left in power.
Some in the group queried his lack of policy specifics. David said the party is “just very polarised: you’ve got the extreme left and then you’ve got the middle and then Keir Starmer who will say anything.”
Jane said that his difficulty “is a divided party and he struggles to convey his personal convictions.”
Stephanie also felt Starmer is more centrist than a leftwinger “but Labour is funded by the unions so he may have to support them”. Voters were “between a rock and a hard place,” she added.
Voters remain incandescent with Boris Johnson. There’s no hope of a comeback
Thatcher fan Stephanie said she was embarrassed and ashamed by the Conservative party.
David said that having voted Conservative, the more he saw of Boris Johnson the more he was impressed by his intellectual ability … but as time wore on “I just lost complete trust in him; he has no moral compass”.
There was still disgust at partygate, with Jane remaining incandescent at what happened in the Johnson era.
Voters want a general election more than another Tory leadership contest
Patrick, the most ardent Conservative supporter of the group, said that if the Conservatives do not rally round Liz Truss, “they’re committing political suicide”.
Jane, however, said that we were already past the point of no return: “I don’t think she’ll survive. I think she’ll gradually give up on things because she’ll watch her popularity ebb away, then she’ll not be able to manage her MPs and we will have a general election sooner rather than later.
Three of the group said that Tories should get rid of Liz Truss. Four of the seven wanted an early election.
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Core one nation Conservative values still looked popular
The danger for Labour and Starmer is that there is a lingering fear of the left, and a residual affection for core Tory values. Patrick said the Tories should go back to standing for law and order, high growth, low taxes, and supporting aspirations.
Self-styled centrist Jane said that as well as strong public services, she believed in a healthy economy to provide the tax revenues to support them.
Jasmine, who could now support Labour, said the “Tories have still got the interests of the country at heart in essence”.
The focus group participants are profoundly worried about the future
Every member of the group said they were “negative” about Britain’s future.
Stephanie said she had no faith in those in charge to solve the nation’s problems. Jane said she was feeling “quite highly anxious” for her children, adding that there was an “arrogant disconnect” between leaders and voters but what was different this time was the “borderline desperation” epitomised by the use of food banks.
Phyllis felt it was less bad in the 1980s than today because in the Thatcher era there was greater social mobility then.
David said that the difference between the 1970s and now is house prices. Jane concluded by saying she thought “we’re on the edge of some social unrest”, adding she “doesn’t want to see strikes and wants everyone to negotiate but some people are going to be so desperate.”
It is hard to remain in power if that sentiment is widely felt.
Faces marked by terror and torment fill North Darfur’s displacement camps.
Their eyes fill with despair as they describe what they have survived during a 16-month siege on one of Sudan‘s oldest cities.
It has entrapped their loved ones and spread armed violence, leaving village after village burnt to the ground.
Extreme cases of torture, rape and forced starvation are shared again and again in horrifying detail.
This elderly man told us he was blinded by the RSF when he tried to flee
Women collapse into sobs as they contemplate the future and the elderly raise their hands to the sky, trembling and empty, to pray for overdue relief.
In shelters which have seen little to no humanitarian aid, camp directors hand us lists showing requests for clean water, medical supplies and food. Even the trademark white United Nations tarp is scarce.
Some frayed tent material is used to close the gaps in the stick-lined walls that surround the traditional huts displaced families have built for themselves.
They use them as a temporary refuge from the battles that rage for control of the regional capital, Al Fashir.
Instead of fleeing into nearby Chad, they wait here for news that the siege has been lifted and they may finally be able to return.
But that news may never come.
The battle for Al Fashir – and Sudan
Al Fashir is being suffocated to death by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) as they push to claim full control of the Darfur region as a base for their parallel government, after the military recaptured the capital Khartoum and other key sites in central Sudan.
Close to a million people are facing famine in Al Fashir and surrounding camps as the RSF enforces a full blockade, launching armed attacks on volunteers and aid workers risking their lives to bring in food.
Inside the city, thousands are bombarded by almost daily shelling from surrounding RSF troops.
The RSF have physically reinforced their siege with a berm – a raised earth mound. First spotted by Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, the berm is visible from space.
The Sudan war started in April 2023, when long-simmering tensions between the Sudanese army and the RSF broke out in Khartoum.
UN agencies said in July that some 40,000 people have been killed and almost 13 million displaced.
Several mediation attempts have failed to secure a humanitarian access mechanism or any lulls in fighting.
‘We could hear some of them being killed’
As the bombs drop on Al Fashir, war-wounded civilians travel by road to the last functioning hospital in the state. But the beds in Tina Hospital are largely empty.
The facility cannot afford to provide free or subsidised treatment to the people that need it.
“It is so difficult. This hospital cannot care for a patient without money,” says Dr Usman Adam, standing over an emaciated teenager with a gunshot wound in his stomach.
“We need support.
“Either medication or money to the victims – by anyhow, we need support.”
Maaz, 18, a victim of a gunshot wound, is treated in the last functioning hospital in North Darfur
In nearby camps, women are grieving brothers, fathers, and husbands killed, missing or still trapped inside Al Fashir. Many of them were forced to face Rapid Support Forces (RSF) torture as they tried to escape.
“If you don’t have money to pay ransom, they take you inside a room that looks like an office and say ‘if you don’t have anything we will kill you or worse’,” says 20-year-old mother Zahra, speaking to us at a girls’ school in Tine that is now a makeshift shelter.
“They beat the men, robbed them and whipped them. We could hear some of them being killed while we women were rounded up on a mat and threatened. We gave them money, but they took the other girls into a room, and we couldn’t tell if they were beaten or raped.”
Zahra was threatened by the RSF and heard people being killed
The women around her on the mat echo Zahra’s anguish.
“They beat us, tortured us, humiliated us – everything you can imagine!” one yells out in tears.
A mother named Leila sits next to her four children and stares down at the ground. I ask her if she has hope of returning to Al Fashir, and she starts to say no as the women nearby shout: “Yes! We will return by the grace of God.”
Leila complies with weak affirmation, but her eyes have the haunting resignation of permanent loss. Her city, as she knows it, is gone.
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Babies and young children silently stare out from their laps. Many of them wear the signs of physical shock. An older woman on the mat tells us her infant grandson was blinded by the extreme conditions of their escape and takes us to see him and his mother in their hut.
“We fled Al Fashir to Tawila camp while I was heavily pregnant,” says Nadeefa, as her son Mustafa cries on her lap, unable to focus his eyes.
Mustafa was blinded as a newborn after his mother fled the RSF
“After I had given birth, we made the journey here. Mustafa was only 16 days old and could not handle the harsh conditions. As time went on, we realised he couldn’t see. We think he was blinded as a newborn on the road.”
Her mother and mother-in-law sit on the mat next to her and take turns trying to calm Mustafa down. Her mother-in-law Husna tells us that her own son, Mustafa’s father, is missing.
“We don’t know where my son is,” she says. “He disappeared as we fled.”
Mustafa’s father went missing as the family fled the RSF
‘They killed my children’
An elderly woman, Hawa, approaches us in the same yard with her own story to tell.
“These people [the RSF] killed my children. They killed my in-laws. They orphaned my grandchildren. They killed two of my sons.
“One of my daughters gave birth on the road and I brought her with me to this camp. I don’t have anything,” she says, trembling as she stands.
“They raped my two younger daughters in front of me. There is nothing more than that. They fled from shame and humiliation. I haven’t seen them since.”
The RSF raped Hawa’s daughters in front of her
Dr Afaf Ishaq, the camp director and emergency response room (EER) volunteer, is sobbing nearby.
“I have dealt with thousands and thousands of cases, I am on the verge of a mental breakdown,” she says.
“Sometimes in the morning, I have my tea and forget that I need to eat or how to function. I just sit listening to testimony after testimony in my head and feel like I am hallucinating.”
Everyone we speak to points to her as a source of relief and help, but Dr Ishaq is largely carrying the burden alone. When haphazard financial support for the ERR community kitchens ends, she says people flock to her complaining of hunger.
Dr Ishaq lives in the camp by herself after fleeing her home in Khartoum at the start of the war in April 2023. She says she quickly escaped after her husband joined the RSF.
Dr Afaf Ishaq has seen thousands of cases of violence and sexual violence
Since then, she has been constantly reminded of the atrocities committed by her husband’s ranks in Khartoum, her hometown Al Fashir and the ethnic violence they are carrying out across the region.
“The RSF focuses on ethnicity,” she says. “If you are from the Zaghawa, Massalit, Fur – from Darfuri tribes – you should be killed, you should be raped.
“If they find that your mother or father are from another tribe like Rizeigat or Mahamid – they won’t rape you, they won’t touch you.”
The RSF has besieged Al Fashir for 16 months. File pic: Reuters
A message for the West
In January, the Biden administration determined that the RSF are carrying out genocide in Darfur, 20 years after former US secretary of state Colin Powell made the declaration in 2004.
But the designation has done little to quell the violence.
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Sudan’s government has accused the United Arab Emirates (UAE) of supplying arms and logistical support to the RSF. The UAE denies these claims but many on the ground in Darfur say its role in this war is accepted as fact.
The silence from the UAE’s allies in the West, including the UK and US, is felt loudly here – punctuated by gunfire and daily bombs.
Dr Ishaq fled her home in Khartoum at the start of the war after her husband joined the RSF
Dr Ishaq’s distress ratches up when I ask her about neglect from the international community.
“I direct my blame to the international community. How can they speak of human rights and ignore what is happening here?
“Where is the humanity?”
The prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann has refused to be interviewed by the Metropolitan Police.
German drifter Christian B, as he is known under privacy laws, became a leading person of interest following the three-year-old British girl’s disappearance from a holiday resort in Portugal in 2007.
He is expected to be released from a jail in Germany as soon as Wednesday, at the end of a sentence for raping an elderly woman in Praia da Luz in 2005.
The Met said it sent an “international letter of request” to the 49-year-old for him to speak with them – but he rejected it.
Madeleine vanished shortly after she was left sleeping by her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, who went for dinner in a nearby restaurant in Praia da Luz.
The search for the British toddler has gone on for 18 years
The Met said Christian B remains a suspect in its own investigation – with Portuguese and German authorities also probing Madeleine’s disappearance.
He has previously denied any involvement.
Detective Chief Inspector Mark Cranwell, a senior investigating officer, said the force will “continue to pursue any viable lines of inquiry” in the absence of an interview with Christian B.
He said: “For a number of years we have worked closely with our policing colleagues in Germany and Portugal to investigate the disappearance of Madeleine McCann and support Madeleine’s family to understand what happened…
“We have requested an interview with this German suspect but, for legal reasons, this can only be done via an International Letter of Request which has been submitted.
“It was subsequently refused by the suspect. In the absence of an interview, we will nevertheless continue to pursue any viable lines of inquiry.”
Madeleine was taken from her family’s apartment while her parents dined in a nearby restaurant
In June, a hit-and-run theory emerged in connection with Madeleine’s death.
But her mother, Kate, has long dismissed the suggestion her daughter managed to get out of the apartment alone.
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Sky’s Martin Brunt investigates the hit-and-run theory in the case of Madeleine McCann
A number of searches have been carried out by German, Portuguese and British authorities since her disappearance – with the latest taking place near the Portuguese municipality of Lagos in June.
In 2023, investigators carried out searches near the Barragem do Arade reservoir, about 30 miles from Praia da Luz.
Christian B spent time in the area between 2000 and 2017 and had photographs and videos of himself near the reservoir.
In October last year, the suspect was cleared by a German court of unrelated sexual offences, alleged to have taken place in Portugal between 2000 and 2017.
The total funding given to the Met’s investigation, titled Operation Grange, has been more than £13.2m since 2011 after a further £108,000 was secured from the government in April.
On NATO’s doorstep, Russia is rehearsing for war.
It has deployed tanks, battleships and supersonic bombers for military drills with Belarus that are happening on land, at sea and in the air.
‘Zapad-2025′ are the allies’ first joint exercises since the invasion of Ukraine, and on Sunday involved the launch of a hypersonic missile in the Barents Sea.
“There are several strategic goals here that [Russia and Belarus] want to achieve,” Hanna Liubakova, an independent Belarusian journalist, told Sky News.
“Scare, show that they are capable, show that they can threaten… and of course, they’re also checking what the reaction and response could be.”
The reaction so far has been frosty, to say the least.
A Russian nuclear submarine sets out to sea during the practice run. Pic: AP.
Russia launches a Zircon hypersonic missile at a target during the Zapad joint strategic exercise. Pic: Reuters
Ahead of the drills, Poland closed its border with Belarus and deployed more than 30,000 troops as part of its own military exercises.
Lithuania is also holding drills and said it would bolster defences along its frontiers with Russia and Belarus.
The authorities in Minsk, and in Moscow, insist the drills are defensive and not aimed at any other country.
A Russian nuclear submarine sets out to sea during the practice run. Pic: AP.
On Friday, the Kremlin even described Europe’s concerns as “emotional overload”.
But the last time these drills happened four years ago, it led to a massive build-up of Russian troops in Belarus, which Moscow then used for part of its invasion of Ukraine a few months later.
And the drills aren’t the only thing Europe is worried about.
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The show of strength comes at a time of heightened tension after recent Russian drone incursions into NATO airspace – first in Poland and then Romania.
There’s a feeling in the West that the drones and drills are a test of NATO’s defences and Western resolve.
But you’re unlikely to find that opinion on the streets of the Belarusian capital, Minsk.
“There is no aggression,” Mikhail told Sky News. “Exercises are normal, especially planned ones. So I think it’s fine.”
Pic: AP
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According to Kristina, Russia and Belarus are “not the aggressors”.
“I think our head of state [Alexander Lukashenko] will solve this issue and we will support him. He’s not aggravating the situation.”
A provocation or not, the drills offer NATO a fresh chance to scrutinise Russia’s military, after three-and-a-half years of costly combat in Ukraine.
It would feel a lot more comfortable, though, if they weren’t happening so close to home.
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