Tory poll progress puts pressure on Charles Kennedy

ConservativeHome has already reported two polls that give 'Cameron's Conservatives' narrow leads over Labour.  Another poll from BPIX for the Mail on Sunday (not online) gives Labour a 38% to 37% lead but that 1% lead advantage contrasts with an 8% lead from just two months ago.

The Tory advance isn't just worrying Labour.  It is piling pressure on to Charles Kennedy - as predicted by ConservativeHome last Thursday.  Thursday's post noted how the LibDems "always appealed to voters because they themselves have appeared moderate, reasonable, consensual and compassionate" but that "David Cameron is now claiming all of those qualities for his own leadership".  Mr Kennedy has been forced to dismiss suggestions that he is to stand down as Liberal Democrat leader next year as "total and absolute nonsense".  Peter Oborne has accused the LibDems of being "in a state of inanition".  The now politically inactive Mr Kennedy is said to be physically exhausted.

The MoS/ BPIX survey found that David Cameron's pregnant wife, Samantha, was more popular than Mrs Blair.  34% thought Samantha Cameron was the best model for Number Ten's 'first lady'.  Only 21% chose Cherie Blair as the best role model.  By 38% to 31% BPIX's 2,087 respondents preferred the idea of dinner with the Camerons to the prospect of eating with the Blairs.

Comments

[Chris Palmer]

The Lib Dems are not just empty. They are a void within a vacuum surrounded by a vast inanition.

[Rich]

By 38% to 31% BPIX's 2,087 respondents preferred the idea of dinner with the Camerons to the prospect of eating with the Blairs.

Well I'm glad we're getting down to the really important stuff now the election is over with....

[Sean Fear]

The frightening thing is how much of the political class really do think that that is "the really important stuff."

[Cllr Iain Lindley]

Actually that's a very encouraging statistic, it shows Cameron is seen as down-to-earth and likeable.

[Clare Lewis]

The only problem with that Iain is that the Labour party will have little trouble in changing that view. I am surprised Blair didn't bring up his involvement in the ERM debacle during PMQ's.

[Chris Palmer]

T"he only problem with that Iain is that the Labour party will have little trouble in changing that view"

...enter the BBC - Blair's Broadcasting Corporation, soon to be Brown's Broadcasting Corporation...

[Jaz]

The myth that the BBC is blairite or Brownite is ridiclous.. You cannot expect the BBC to say things that contradict everything everyother paper/news channel is saying.

Blair will find that attacking Cameron on drugs won't work..as polls suggest.

Attacking Cameron on ERM involvement inn 1992 won't work as he was only an advisor and know know what his advice was at all..

Attacking Cameron on being "old tory" won't work as everything cameron has done contradicts that.

Blair cannot attack Cameron on being well off.... As Blair was too..

Labour is split as to what to do...Brown wants to charge down a different path and Blair on the other. In the end, the onlything that will happen is a subdued message of desperate rambling.

T"he only problem with that Iain is that the Labour party will have little trouble in changing that view"

Hardly...Cameron's pretty cool media team has kept him down to earth compared with a pretty restricted brown and blair.

Infact..A pregnant shy wife, a child that needs to be looked after almost 24/7... Its an image which is strikingly down to earth.

[Chris Palmer]

"The myth that the BBC is Blairite or Brownite is ridiculous."

Says who? You? Clearly you have been brainwashed like many others. The BBC News, which is the way that most people in this country get their news (worryingly), is blatantly biased. They have been plugging Labour and Blair for years - and only recently have they moved further to the left still (after the Greg Dyke affair etc) and have started showing increasing support for the Lib Dems. It's so obvious at times and they hardly seem to bother hiding it. Lib Dem "shadow cabinet" MP's are always on their giving their views when a Conservative shadow minister should have been interviewed.

Many of the news readers and correspondents are Labour supporters, eg. The former BBC Labour Correspondent Andrew Marr.

[Cllr Iain Lindley]

Oh for god's sake, every Government and opposition since time began has complained that the BBC is biased. You don't get anywhere by whining about media bias - change the record.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I remember lots of pro-government antics during the Iraq war. Doh.

[John Hustings]

The BBC is left-wing. Anyone who doesn't see that must be left-wing themselves.

[Geoff]

There is no specific bias towards any particular party by the BBC; it is an institutionalised and warped type of political correctness. I recommend this excellent blog for those who don't know it already.

http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/

Make up your own mind.

[EU Serf]

The claim that the BBC is pro Labour is a little mixed up. The BBC has a mind of its own and very often does not support the Government. The problem for us is that it is institutionally left wing. It normally attacks the government from the left flank.

Time to privatise this throwback.

[malcolm]

I might be tempted to agree with you Serf until I had experience of TV in the USA.For all its many faults and the bias of some of its political coverage the BBC is still vastly preferable to something like Fox News or the lowest common denominator commercial channels.

[John Hustings]

"The problem for us is that it is institutionally left wing. It normally attacks the government from the left flank."

That's exactly right. If the BBC *does* attack Labour, it is because it perceives it as being too right-wing. (That is small comfort to right-of-centre minded people like myself.)

The concerns of conservative-minded people are rarely reflected. The opinions of the Shami Chakrabatis of the world are given non-stop air time.

Furthermore, the BBC clouds what the real political divide is in this country. Or, to put it another way, they are firmly on one side of the divide. The old division of Old Labour favouring the poor and the Tories favouring the rich just no longer applies. Too many in this country do not realise this.

The real divide is based on values: There are those who hold progressive, politically-correct, counter-culture values and oppose everything this country used to stand for. They promote multi-culturalism and denigrate Britain's past, and attack anything that even slightly approximates "traditional" morality. They have done this through a Gramscian culture war, imposed by stealth, and striking the fear of God into anyone who holds an alternative view.

The BBC constantly promote this viewpoint. It's also cross-party, since "New Labour" *and* the "Tory Modernisers" each embody it.

On the other side of the divide lay the views of the majority of the country. On almost all opinion polls the general public are shown to be more socially-conservative than the media elite and the ruling classes. The BBC never tries to reflect their views; it tries to propagandize its own worldview to them (or in their words to "re-educate" them).

Unfortunately, because of the enormous influence of the BBC in this country, most people are not aware of this divide. Curiously, a lot of people trust the BBC; more, even, than they do politicians. Alot of socially-conservative minded people will vote Labour because they are unaware of what Labour represent.

The situation is different in America. I say this as someone who has lived in the United States (and my time there has hugely influenced my political views). People are much more aware of the political divide. They *know* it is about values, and not about rich versus poor. That's why the intellectual class are more likely to be democrat, and the poorer working class are more likely to be Republican. That is the way it *should* be here.

I am convinced that it *would* be that way were it not for the BBC.

[Tom]

I think that people must also take into account the enormous benefit that the BBC gives our country. The BBC is the best form of soft power that is at the use of any government. Whilst those of you who are arguing about the left/right bias of the BBC (and there are a lot of factors to take into consideration here such as the number of women working there, the fact that the media class are naturally left leaning anyway, the fact that Che Guevara and fashionable left wing revolutionary politics have filtered post 60s into the mainstream, the fact by and large the BBC is multi cultural and has a mandate for 'understanding' which is more easily identifiable with trendy left wing islingtonness that right wing fulham) all of these factors are worht arguning about but Blairite and Cameronite politics are pretty similar now and the BBC does take an extremely beneficial role in processing our democracy.

More important than all of these factors however is the fact that the BBC is the British propaganda tool par excellence. There is no better way to allow our own political conciousness to seep out into the world to help with the process of spreading democracy through the world. Whilst the BBC should be getting rid of crappy shows for domestic audience it should be increasing its journalistic remit and be the leading fourth estate player in the world. The benefits long term would be huge.

I dont agree with you John about your idea of what it should be bere and I would be interested to hear your views as to why it would be a better thing if we were more like the states. Bearing in mind the level of politics and the role of religion I am glad that I have the BBC as my number one channel and not the God channel or whatever...

I also saw in the papers a quote from Sami Chakrabati and she quite brilliantly summed up what Britain meant to her

"Fair trials". Give her more air time. Would rather listen to her than John Redwood.

[johnC]

An excellent analysis by John Hustings. But the situation is even worse than he states, because the BBC is aided and abetted in its propagation of progressive politically correct counter-cultural values by the mainstream Churches (you only have to read the reports from the General Synod of the Church of England to get a flavour of the new totalitarian liberal orthodoxy), charities such as Oxfam, Christian Aid and
Action Aid (how encouraging to hear David Cameron attacking Christian Aid for its anti-capitalist prejudice recently), the universities and higher education, the teacher training establishment and sadly much of our newly-politicised civil service in which promotion and advancement is now dependent on conforming to the New Labour ethos. Doctrinaire and intolerant political correctness is now endemic throughout the public sector.

[Chris Palmer]

"Oh for god's sake, every Government and opposition since time began has complained that the BBC is biased. You don't get anywhere by whining about media bias - change the record."

Yes, Cllr Lindley. People in the past have said exactly the same thing. People such as yourself have said exactly the same thing. But have you done anything about it. No. In the past - before the BBC was such a hugely influential left-wing political force, it could have been tackled, but it was not, and consequently it has grown stronger and stronger - having now become a supposedly "trusted" and informed section of the media that the majority of people in this country listen to. It is people such as yourself that, by saying "change the record" and not condeming the BBC's biased journalism, are in the end aiding it, by putting out the message that "oh, it's too entrenched, or oh, it's too difficult to set right." Pathetic.

Your remark represents the typical Conservative party attitude now, and in years gone by, where something has or is going wrong, or Labour has changed something, and you will do nothing when in power to change it back or improve the situation. If the Conservative party is not careful, the BBC will become an institution almost as untouchable as the NHS. My suggestion would be that when the Conservatives are next in power, they ditch the BBC. Let it advertise (it basically does already) and then we shall see what happens to such a bloated organisation, full of needless hangers-on.

John Hustings is correct. The BBC only attacks the Labour Party from the left and is slowly but surely indocrinating (or re-educating) the population - just as children currently are and have been in schools for years. I think many of these comments have some reference to the dominant political narrative of the left thread. It is the slow errosion of values by BBC journalism that will affect the Conservative party in the future. Can you not see this?

[Daniel Vince-Archer]

If you think the BBC is bad, you obviously haven't watched Channel 4 News recently.

[Richard Weatherill]

"It has been a privilege to advise Tony Blair over the past six years.

"I leave with an abiding sense of a radical, energetic and reforming prime minister, crystal clear about his goals, and of a government and civil service ever more capable of achieving them."

Lord Birt (BBC Director General 1992-99) on quitting as TB's strategy adviser. Nuff said?