Brown slumps in poll after budget

By Peter Griffiths

LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Gordon Brown has fallen further behind the Conservatives to trail by 18 percentage points after his government announced a record budget deficit, an opinion poll showed on Friday.

If the result was repeated at the next election, due by June 2010, the Conservatives would beat Labour by a landslide and return to power for the first time since 1997 with a 150-seat parliamentary majority.

In the first opinion poll since Chancellor Alistair Darling unveiled Britain's worst economic performance since World War Two on Wednesday, Labour slipped four points to 27 percent, with the Conservatives up four on 45 percent.

It is the biggest lead for the Conservative Party in the YouGov/Daily Telegraph survey since last September. A separate poll by ICM in the Guardian the day before the budget put the gap at 10 points.

Brown, a former chancellor who has staked his political reputation on his handling of the economic crisis, was losing voter support on the economy, the YouGov poll suggested.

Asked which party would do a better job with the country's finances, 39 percent backed the Conservatives, up four points on last month, compared to 24 percent for Labour.

Brown's personal ratings also took a knock. Some 69 percent were dissatisfied with his performance as prime minister, a rise of four percent on last month.

By contrast, Conservative leader David Cameron saw his personal standing climb by seven points to 56 percent, a rise described by the Conservative supporting Daily Telegraph as a "Budget Bounce."