“Strong and stable” – that’s how Theresa May would like her party to be seen on the election campaign trail.
The Prime Minister has built her entire platform on the slogan, repeating it constantly in interviews and campaign speeches.
A recent YouGov poll, however, reveals that despite Ms May’s repeated use of the phrase, so far only 15 per cent of Britons claim to have heard it.
The “strong and stable” slogan has attracted criticisms from Westminster commentators, who have been complaining for some time about the Prime Minister’s robotic delivery of campaign speeches.
But, as YouGov points out on its website, “the message has yet to cut through to everyday people”.
Those who are most likely to have heard the phrase are classed as the “most politically engaged” people in Britain. Among people who “pay a high level of attention to politics,” 39 per cent claimed to have heard the slogan.
In the chart above, produced for The Independent by statista, the figure falls to just 11 per cent of people who consider themselves to have a “medium level of political attention”. The majority of Brits fall under this category.
As for those who pay a “low level of attention” to politics, only 1 per cent said they have heard the “strong and stable” phrase.
Those who haven’t heard it yet are likely to come across the slogan soon enough, as Ms May and her ministers continue to hammer out the message on the campaign trail.
Earlier this week, the European Parliament’s chief Brexit coordinator mocked Ms May’s mantra, suggesting she lacks a “strong and stable” understanding of the complexity of the issues surrounding Britain’s withdrawal from the EU.
Guy Verhofstadt said on Twitter: “Any Brexit deal requires a strong & stable understanding of the complex issues involved. The clock is ticking – it's time to get real.”
The YouGov poll, with results published on Wednesday, also found a significant increase in voting intention for the Tories.
The results had the Conservatives up four percentage points to 48 per cent, with Labour down to 29 per cent, the Liberal Democrats on 10 per cent and Ukip with just five per cent.
Ms May was also found to still be the favoured choice for best Prime Minister on 49 per cent, with Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn backed by 21 per cent of voters and 29 per cent still undecided.
