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Labour received a further boost this week as four new polls showed Jeremy Corbyn's party eating into the Conservative lead ahead of the General Election.

The polls for the Sunday newspapers put Labour between 35 per cent and 33 per cent, up significantly on the scores as low as 26 per cent it was recording early in the campaign.

In one survey by YouGov for the Sunday Times, the Tory advantage was narrowed to just nine points, the first time it has been in single figures in a mainstream poll since Theresa May called the snap election on April 18.

The figures would still deliver a comfortable Tory majority if repeated on June 8, but they will bolster Labour insiders' belief that Mr Corbyn's campaign is making inroads into Mrs May's support following her poorly-received policies on social care for the elderly.

Crucially, a result on these lines would put Mr Corbyn comfortably above the 30.4 per cent vote share achieved by Ed Miliband in 2015, which some supporters argue should be seen as a benchmark of whether he should stay on as leader.

The 35 per cent support for Labour recorded by YouGov is the best rating for the party since March last year before the EU referendum and challenge to Mr Corbyn's leadership.

The poll put Tories on 44 per cent, though Mrs May's party was on 46 per cent in separate surveys by ORB International for the Sunday Telegraph, Opinium for the Observer and Survation for the Mail on Sunday.

The Survation survey, conducted entirely after Thursday's Tory manifesto launch, found 28 per cent of voters said they were less likely to vote Conservative because of the social care package, branded a "dementia tax" by opponents.

The Telegraph and Mail on Sunday polls put Labour two points up since last week on 34 per cent, while the Observer put Labour up one point on 33 per cent.

Earlier this week two other polls also showed Mr Corbyn's party was closing in on Theresa May's Conservative Party.

And Mr Corbyn said: "This message is getting through. Get on any bus, get on any train, go in any cafe, talk to people.

"The whole discussion and the whole debate is unravelling from the Tory point of view, because people are saying 'Hang on, why are so many young people in such stress?

“Why are so many older people being threatened by this Government? Can't we as a society, as a country, as a people do things differently and better?"

Mr Corbyn accused Theresa May of fomenting a "war between the generations" by playing off old against young in her election manifesto.

Meanwhile Shadow chancellor John McDonnell told activists in Birmingham there was "all to play for" in the remaining three weeks, declaring: "Let's get out there and win this election, let's carpe diem (seize the day), let's seize this opportunity, with courage and determination, we can win this election despite what they throw at us."

But the Prime Minister fought back by saying that a shadow cabinet row over the renewal of Britain's Trident nuclear deterrent showed that Mr Corbyn could not be trusted to defend the country.

Mrs May too played up the prospect of a close result on June 8, as she urged supporters not to allow Corbyn into Downing Street on the back of a coalition of opposition parties.

Writing in the Daily Mail, the Prime Minister said it was a "cold, hard fact" that if her party lost six seats, Mr Corbyn could take power in a scenario which should "scare us all".

After shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry suggested that the future of Trident could be up for grabs in a post-election Labour defence review, Mrs May said it was clear that a Corbyn-led administration would not be "unequivocally committed" to Britain's independent nuclear deterrent.

"They would not be able to defend this country," she told Tory activists in west London. "A Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour government could not be trusted with the defence of our country."

Mr Corbyn was forced to restate his commitment to renewing Trident, with a senior aide insisting that Labour was committed to a continuous at-sea deterrent "come what may".

Additional reporting by Press Association