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Cameron's net dissatisfaction rating falls to the same level as Miliband's --- but that's before Tory HQ has painted the Labour leader as Dukakis II

By Tim Montgomerie
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Ed Miliband is supposedly the Tory Party's greatest asset but the latest YouGov survey for The Sunday Times (PDF) finds that his net disapproval rating is now no worse than that of David Cameron:

CameronMiliband

Although Tory HQ is worried about the weakness of the Prime Minister's numbers - a weakness that won't have been helped by his performance at the Leveson Inquiry - the view is that when Ed Miliband comes under sustained focus there will be a big gap in the ratings of the two men vying to be PM.

As I mentioned on Wednesday, Tory strategists are preparing an onslaught on Ed Miliband but the model isn't 1992. They believe that the politician who Miliband most resembles is not Kinnock, John Major’s 1992 and working class opponent, but Michael Dukakis, the technocratic US Democrat beaten by the well-heeled George Bush Senior in 1988. Not wanting Labour to realise its error there will no great focus on Mr Miliband until much nearer the election. When it comes, however, the Leader of the Opposition will be presented as an elitist - distant from mainstream concerns on welfare, immigration and crime.

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