As Christmas draws near the Conservatives have finally got to be where they need to be in the polls to win a good overall majority. The YouGov poll in tomorrow's Sunday Times shows the Conservatives on 45% (up four from last month) for the first time. This is a 13% lead over Labour who are down 3 on 32%. The LibDems are up one point to 14%.
Gordon Brown's own approval rating has also slumped to minus 26%, down from minus 10%last month. That compares with the 48% positive approval rating he enjoyed at the height of his post-leadership "bounce" in August. David Cameron has a positive rating of 20%.
At least I will have something to talk about on News 24 later!
28 comments:
It had to happen. GB is a disaster as a PM for all to see,
Why a link to Amazon & the Sunday Times Build your Own House?
As arch traitor Broon signed away England's sovereignty yesterday (so he thinks) he was in fact signing his own Political death warrant, McLabours too, Mclabour will lose the next general election by a landslide.
What the Conservatives need to do is come out and say they will offer only whats fair right and just, a referendum on EUssr MEMBERSHIP!.....do that and the election is theirs!.
How long can it be before the Blairite counter coup ? Ho ho ho ..
They must now know they are doomed if Brown stays as leader.
From a political point of view I hope Brown stays - but for the country's sake he needs to be replaced soon. ( I wonder if TB regrets leaving parliament ? )
'Tis the season to be jolly.
Does that mean minus 26% of the population approve of Brown? That seems about right to me.
Well, I am a little excited by this and hopefully it will shut up the columnists who always bang on about the 45% mark. No doubt they'll be asking for 50% next. Anyway after 5 minutes I remember it is only one poll and the general election is nowhere in sight. So Cameron can certainly chalk up 07 as his and hopefully next year the shadow cabinet & advisers will have thought about long term strategy to sustain Tory popularity not just as a reaction to Labour's woes but also support for Tory virtues and some more policy tid-bits.
Will Radio Four mention this tomorrow morning on its 9am news?
Probably the Spice Girls are a more important news item.nbzea
I honestly don't think it is possible at this stage for Brown to repair is premiership. The longer he's PM the more damage he does to his party - I wonder how long before the party realises this and ousts him?
A Swansea blog
The clunking fist seems to be a glass paw.
perhaps he has already become mr has bean.
Another shameless link to my latest picture...
So, Gordon, how's the new job working out?
I smell fear and dismay in the heart of the Parliamentary Labour Party. And unlike Blair, Brown cannot cheer them up. He can't even cheer himself up.
I think it's because Lab have been involved in more than five scandals during their time in government. Apart from the negative impression resulting from the pension raid, stealth tax in general, NHS dentistry (lack of), the armed forces (not funding them but using them incl. photo ops), loss of border control, EU-CON, new GP contracts, postal votes, council tax rises, the election u-turn, vehicle tracking, fuel duty, general arrogance (e.g. Liam Byrne) and there was something else but I can't think of it at the moment. I guess they'll spin themselves back again because the voting public have short memories and the BBC keep showing the Paxman/Howard interview and J.Redwood's Welsh national anthem mime.
Jonathan Hemlock - That was funny!
Trumpeter - "Fear and dismay ...". Agree. They are in absolute disarray. They don't know where - or to whom - to scamper next. Neither does paper tiger extraordinaire Gordon Brown.
All you people who always thought he had such a great intellect, well, he's a paper tiger and I don't know why you didn't see it.
The reason he has been so silent all these years is, he was afraid of being found out. Gordon Brown has a sense of entitlement without just cause, and he knows it.
I just wish we had David Davis to look forward to instead of politically correct, global warming, drawing room liberal Dave.
It's a bad patch for Labour. But have the Tories proved that they are electable? Or are even a credible opposition?
Would the Tories have bailed out Northern Rock shareholders rather than paying the Police and the Nurses?
From the deafening silence, it appears they would have done exactly the same.
If Labour ditch Brown fairly soon, they will have to find a caretaker PM, which tends to favour Straw perhaps.
Anyone taking a longer personal career view (?Milliband, Johnson), will certainly not want to try and deal with the current mess and then lose the 2010 election - end of career!
I reckon they are unlikely to get sufficient MPs to vote Brown out at all - the ones who are standing down will want to keep their noses in the trough as long as possible, ditto the ones who are likely to lose their seats: add in all the Blairites who want to see Brown absolutely creamed, and I foresee he hangs on by his fingertips for another 2 years.
I'm sure there will still be trolls, malcontents and muppets generally posting in ConservativeHome and elsewhere saying that anything less than 55% means that psephologically labour are in command of the situation and that under Cameron we Tories are all doomed.
Two and a half years gives the Tory party plenty of time plenty of time to cock things up again, of course, and nobody sensible thinks or ever thought that Cameron's election as leader solved every problem. I'd have thought, however, that things looked modestly encouraging for the time being and suggest some good teamwork is happening on our side and the opposite on the other one.
just saw andy marrs' interview with john major.i actually love to listen to john major speaking about the current political scene because he is able to get to the heart of what is wrong with new labour and in the nicest and quietest possible way completely eviscerates their 'personalities' and their spin.sometimes,a well-timed pause,a wry smile and a raising of the eyebrows is all you need.
The bawgie-eater has two years more of utter public humiliation and personal collapse to look forward to.
Good - the evil, spiteful foreigner deserves every wretched second of his disintigration.
The polls are good for the Tories and why not be bullish about them particularly after a lot of the commentators on the left wrote Cameron's Party off as recently as September but I'm not convinced that people are necessarily flocking to the Conservative Banner more than deserting the Labour ship as it sinks slowly beneath the waves.
And sticking with the sinking ship analogy I feel that what will ultimately sink the Brown Premiership is the gathering storm over the World Economy and particularly the UK Economy as we enter 2008.
Bill Clinton famously said "It's the economy stupid" and he's right. Brown has had fortune on his side insofar as he inherited the Treasury at a time of an improving World Economic Cycle helped along by free and available cheap credit particularly in the Consumer Credit market ;the resultant increase in UK tax revenues and the collosal spending remit of the UK government in the public sector which further primed the economy.
His move to give the Bank of England independence to set Base Rates was his one and only wise act as Chancellor. This move and the buoyant World Economy in the early years of the century helped mask his disastrous over-complication of the UK tax regime and his welter of red tape which ultimately began to stifle enterprise.
Eventually everyone's luck runs out and his has just has he achieved his ambition to become PM.
The collapse of the sub-prime market in the US just speeded up the inevitability of the disaster.
In 2008 the government will be forced to nationalise Northern Rock if no private buyer can be found that is acceptable, a politically and financially damaging event for Labour and the country. Mortgage and Consumer Debt are at historic high levels and defaults are inevitable in 2008. This coupled with the likely offload of Buy to Let properties on the market after April 2008 when CGT changes make it attractive to the estimated 650,000 buy to let landlords in the UK will further deflate the housing market with a return to negative equity in some cases and the rise of personal bankruptcies.
The "credit crunch" will therefore have started to bite with a vengeance by May 2008 just in time for the local elections, the first real test of Brown and Labour's electoral prospects at a General Election. The local election results are usually bad for government at this point in the electoral cycle but I think they will be particularly bad for Labour.
In the interim we could have seen the spectacle of a Labour Government, having nationalised Northern Rock having to conduct a fire sale of its' assets with mortgage re-possessions, staff redundancies etc in its heartlands of the North East which will further fuel dis-content in Labour ranks as backbenchers suddenly fear for their seats . This all against the background of parliamentary debate over the Lisbon Treaty with Brown being portrayed as reneging on his Manifesto Promise and betraying Britain.
It takes a politician with not just ability but with good presentational skills to recover from that onslaught - Brown already portrayed as "Bottler" and "Mr Bean" simply doesn't have the personal skills or personality to stage a comeback and Labour MPs are just beginning to realise the awful truth that they allowed a "dud" to become leader of their Party
Iain
You are far too experienced a commentator to be orgasmic about opinion polls. It may be stating the bleeding obvious but it seems to be necessary:
1. We are two or more years away from a General Election.
2. Only a few weeks ago Brown appeared to be in an unassailable position. He wasn’t. And nor is Cameron.
3. A week is a long time in politics – two years is an eternity!
4. Public opinion is very fragile and loyalties are very fickle.
5. It’s the marginals which matter.
6. If you were a PM seeking re-election would you rather have all your wobblies near the beginning of your period in office or towards the election date itself?
7. Major won in ’92 despite a series of polls which said that he wouldn’t.
8. On a head to head, and despite the current polls, Brown is likely to shade it on personal grounds v Cameron.
9. The LibDems are leaderless at the moment – they won’t be at the time of the election.
I disagreed with many things that Tony Blair did, but at least he did them well, in process terms at least. Brown, on the other hand, is simply incompetent and without the Blair machine to protect him has been found out. It is difficult to see how he comes back from this, especially given the likely state of the economy in the short term.
I see the Leftie BBC are at it again,They are wishing Cameron Happy Christmas by showing Cockerells documentary on Thur BBC2 He has a bunch of lefties making comment on it.No Tories of course to give balance to the comments. When are the Tories going to put some fear in the BBC to play fair.
Cameron has a lot to learn letting the BBC get away with this.
Word on the street is that Gordon Brown has until May to leave office with 'some' dignity. If Brwon doesn't meet that May deadline then he WILL get the 'push'.
Gordon Brown will be mocked for the rest of his political career.
At last we're where we should be, even if it's just one poll. I wonder what it would take the 32% who remain with the Labour Party to desert them, or at least abstain? Probably nothing short of Brown admitting that he sucks the blood of little children while the rest of the Cabinet look on. Which he doesn't of course.
Bafflingly, while the BBC's website has stories on the Spice Girls' homecoming concert and Charles Kennedy rejecting the offer of a pact, it has no mention of this opinion poll that I could find, though it was quick enough to highlight polls when the Conservatives were behind in August and September.
Punctuation, Iain!
You should have written:
Happy Christmas, Dave
The comma makes it easier for people to read and avoids people thinking - just for a second - that your post is about a Happy, Christmas Dave.
"The YouGov poll in tomorrow's Sunday Times shows the Conservatives on 45% (up four from last month) for the first time."
Why no mention of this on the Conservative Part website?
Will Radio Four mention this tomorrow morning on its 9am news?
Nope of course not. Instead they offered a hatchet job from Andrew 'best friend of Gordo' Marr on Start the Week previewing Michael Cockerell's doc about DC, which is going out on Thursday. To hear Marr's interview with Cockerell you'd believe they were stuck in a time warp circa - oh - as far back as September 2007. In other words light years away. BBC and co are busy burying their nulab heads in fond nostalgia about clunking fist destroying chameleon 'call me dave'. That was before dave became the feared Flashman and Broon became Bean. Reality will eventually bite the BBC hard.
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