Johnson has 16-point lead over Labour before election - Opinium poll

Boris Johnson's Conservative Party has a 16-point lead over the opposition Labour Party, according to an opinion poll published by Opinium Research on Saturday, ahead of next month's election.

Support for the Conservatives stood at 44%, up 3% compared with last week, compared with Labour's 28%, down 1%. The pro-European Union Liberal Democrats were on 14% and the Brexit Party was on 6%.

Opinium surveyed 2,008 people online between Nov. 13 and Nov. 15, after the Brexit Party announced it would not stand in seats held by Conservative members of parliament.

In other news, Labour plans to nationalise BT's broadband network to provide free internet for all if it wins power, making a radical election pledge to roll back 35 years of private ownership that caught both the company and its shareholders by surprise.

Labour's proposed overhaul of the telecoms infrastructure, an addition to its already broad nationalisation plan, would be paid for by raising taxes on tech firms such as Alphabet's Google, Amazon and Facebook and using its Green Transformation fund.

The announcement by Labour, which is currently lagging Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Conservatives in opinion polls ahead of the Dec. 12 election, sent BT's shares down as much as 3.7%, wiping nearly half a billion pounds off its market value.