A shock poll last night handed Labour a six-point lead in the wake of the Tory sleaze scandal.
The survey for the Daily Mail revealed the scale of public anger over Boris Johnson’s handling of the crisis.
According to the Savanta ComRes survey, a three-point Conservative lead last week has become a six-point deficit in a dramatic turnaround.
The poll found that voters overwhelmingly believe Mr Johnson should apologise for his botched handling of the scandal, which he has repeatedly refused to do, and the vast majority (62 per cent) think Tory grandee Sir Geoffrey Cox should stand down.
Half of voters also believe MPs should be banned from taking second jobs, with barely a quarter saying the current system was acceptable.
And there was little respite for the PM within his own party.
Six in ten Tory voters say they want an apology for the way he has handled the Owen Paterson affair, compared to 66 per cent of voters across the spectrum.
Chris Hopkins of Savanta ComRes said: “These latest poll numbers are obviously striking, and while recent polls have begun to show slim Labour leads, none have been quite as comprehensive as this one.”
Mr Hopkins said Labour still faced an “uphill” battle because some disaffected voters were switching to the Lib Dems and Greens and Sir Keir Starmer’s party was “possibly not completely immune from sleaze allegations themselves”.
He said the survey suggested that an apology from the Prime Minister could “fix everything” for some wavering Tories.
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