40% Tories are 11% ahead

An ICM poll for the Sunday Mirror puts the Tories on 40% - 11% ahead of Labour.

In the ConservativeHome Poll of Polls Labour are now at their lowest level and the Tories are at their highest level.

Apologies for the lateness of posting this (we don't read The Sunday Mirror as attentively at ConservativeHome as we should!).

Comments

[Tory T]

This is our biggest poll lead since Thatcher and 1987.

Labour have, as one newspaper writer put it last week, "the stench of death" about them.

Cameron's "And theory" politics are working. The only downside is that these numbers will confirm Brown in his cowardice and give us 2 more years til a GE.

[simon]

Well, what a result! Congratualtions to DC and the team! What we need now is less 'reactionary' PC-ism, and the policy review teams to report. Bliar being arrested and charged wouldn't go amiss either!

[ToMTom]

You win elections constituency-by-constituency.......let's see if they can

[Ted]

Editor
No excuse - I posted on Homepage at 9:28 - it's been noted that it wasn't till Mr Smithson posted two hours later that you acted!

[David Jones]

Putting the figures of Con 38.75; Lab 30.00 and Lib Dem 18.25 in the Electoral Calculus predictor gives the Conservative party a majority of 32!

Let's hope there won't be a "Brown Bounce"!

[Afleitch]

Excellent - and I see the 'status quo left' media have spent the last week trying to bring our lead down.

[Afleitch]

Excellent - and I see the 'status quo left' media have spent the last week trying to bring our lead down.

[Jack Stone]

Cheer up TomTom. Your party is heading back to power!Or is it?

[Afleitch]

Apologies for the double post

[Dave Bartlett]

If the association of pollution with climate change gets discredited by the arguments presented in Channle 4's 'The Great Global Warming Swindle' would that be bad for the Conservatives? Has Mr Cameron associated himself/the party too closely with Climate Change?

[Daniel VA]

And now for an ironic twist on a typical Cameronsceptic comment on a poll-related thread...

Of course, our lead would be at least 20 points if Ken Clarke, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Theresa May or Oliver Letwin were in charge.

[jorgen]

What's the purpose of a victory unless there are Conservative policies to come?

[Scotty]

Excellent poll for the party which seems to be following a trend which will be causing major concern within Labour HQ.

"What's the purpose of a victory unless there are Conservative policies to come?"
Did I miss something, or have the conservatives won a GE without a manifesto?

[John Dowson]

Dave Bartlett - I think the majority of people accept climate change is happening, and crucially the majority of scientists belive that carbon dioxide and human actions are big reasons/contributers. I don't think it's likely that these views will be reversed any time soon.
The evidence, in my opinion, points to the greenhouse gases as the main cause, and human actions as the driving force.

[Ted]

Scotty - surely by now you realise that there are hidden away protected by the Sacred Clear Blue Water Order the Ten Commandments of the Conservative Party handed down from Mount 1950 and kept in a latter day Ark of The Covenant which are alone the True Conservative Policies. Unless these are included in any manifesto it cannot be a True Conservative one.

You must belong to the Church of David of the Latter Day Heretics....

[malcolm]

I was going to say that DVA!
Does anyone know when the polling took place and how the 'minor' parties fared?
I sincerely doubt if TomTom is a member or even supporter of the Conservative party Jack, far too contemptous of everyone and everything for that.

[jorgen]

So, Ted and Scotty, you apparently believe the Conservative party should look, sound and smell like the other two main parties?

[Deputy Editor]

Ted, we are truly penitent for daring to take a couple of hours off on a Sunday morning!

[Editor]

Thanks Ted (12:48)! Do email me if you ever want me to notice anything quickly. I do keep an eye on threads but sometimes miss things. Emails always reach me more quickly... but as the Deputy Editor says... we are a bit more relaxed on Sundays! We're a two-man band that rely on readers spotting stories, too...

[Ted]

Jorgen
I don't think it does. I think Blair's Labour party adopted the language of the 90's Conservative Party and indeed appeared to take on board many of out policies, at least sufficiently to blunt the differences. Our choice was either to leave the battlefield to them as won and become an ineffective right wing pressure group or to take them on in real improvements in health, education, crime as they affect the majority of the population rather than concentrate on Europe, Section 28, private or selective education or tax treatment for middle class people with private health insurance.

We can present real conservative policies that give real choice to all parents in education - not the LEA led version the LibDems prefer or the centralised model of NuLabour. That doesn't mean arguing on the edges for the 10% who could benefit from Grammar Schools - though I believe selection has a place - but arguing for improvements and flexibility across the board.

It means looking at the NHS that all of us will have need of at some time in our lives - despite private health insurance the one time I had to go in it was an emergency so it was NHS. It means making the NHS work better, deliver higher standards of care (they gave me MRSA), trust doctors and nurses (but not their trade unions). Theories on alternative methods of organising health care are great academic studies but the real issues can't wait another one or two terms of interference and radical change.

Conservatism isn't really about radical reform, it's about making the best of what we've got and making that better (thats why its call Conservatism). It's about being fit for purpose - so soldiers don't suffer in dirty wards with badly managed nursing staff - and neither do old age pensioners or you or I. If the model needs changing then do it gradually - let private enterprise set up alternative hospitals that the NHS can use.

[Modern Conservative]

Jorgen, we should "sound and smell" like the other parties. The Conservative Party is a moderate mainstream party - thats what wins elections.

Our policies will be distictively Conservative in comparison but we don't need to present ourselves as being a fringe backward looking pressure group - if thats what you want then perhaps you'd be better off with UKIP.

[TomTom]

The evidence, in my opinion, points to the greenhouse gases as the main cause, and human actions as the driving force.

Posted by: John Dowson | March 11, 2007 at 14:20

So what are you going to do about water vapour ?

[Ted]

Drink more :-)

[Dave Bartlett]

@John Dowson
"The evidence, in my opinion, points to the greenhouse gases as the main cause, and human actions as the driving force."

You can, if you wish, listen to an audio recording of the Great Gloabl Warming Swindle online.

The case presented, I thought pretty convincingly, was that global warming/climate change is caused by the sun, and has always varied. Carbon Dioxide, to which human contributions are dwarfed by volcanic/animal/biological/oceanic sources, does not lead to increases in temperature. rather increases in temperature CAUSE increases in CO2

[jorgen]

Ted and Modern: The short answer to my question seems to be "yes". You are both happy to drag the CP more and more to the left in order to become less of an opposition party and more of a "me too" party.

Someone argued a couple of weeks ago that the CP was likely to split within the next five years and must say that I really look forward to that day. The "broad church" seems to have become too broad.

[Sean Fear]

" I think Blair's Labour party adopted the language of the 90's Conservative Party and indeed appeared to take on board many of out policies, at least sufficiently to blunt the differences"

They adopted some of the rhetoric. The reality has, of course, been rather different.

Jorgen, if there is a split, then it will be between those who thoroughly dislike what New Labour have done, at an ideological level, and those who are broadly happy with what New Labour have done, but just wish it had been done by people calling themselves Conservatives.

[jorgen]

Sean, well put!

[ToMTom]

Dave Bartlett - you might find the video-recording more exciting !

Global Warming Myth

[TomTom]

was that global warming/climate change is caused by the sun

Be kind of Ptolemaic if it were not......after all it is the most powerful nuclear eactor in our solar system and affects crops, radio propagation and the ionosphere, not to mention tidal activity and it does have sun-spot activity which causes some interesting terrestrial effects...............and yet the Global Warming Religion has NO role at all for the sun

[Matt Davis]

With poll figures like those then we should be seeing massive gains in May's local elections, the true acid test of support at this point.

[Luis]

This is a hosting for the entire "The Great Global Warming Swindle" programme- unusually well researched and thoughtful by Channel 4's modern standards.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9005566792811497638&q=The+Great+Global+Warming+Swindle&hl=en

I believe there are serious grounds for doubt about "global warming theory". Just because enough of the "great and good" sign up to it doesn't necessarily mean it is right.

The power of the sun is the main driver for the earth's temperatures and not CO2 from human activities.

That said, if we are hung up about CO2, if Britain "shut down" tomorrow growth from China would make up the shortfall in 2 years.

So lets keep a bit of perspective before we tax people out of holidays.

Despite the above I agree that a 11 % lead is very impressive.

I guess if enough people believe in global warming DC may be wise to play along with it !

[malcolm]

Sean, do you really think that there are many people who are happy with what Labour have done who are not 'dyed in the wool 'Labour supporters? In the real world I meet virtually no one who fits that description.I do know many people who voted Conservative throughout the the Thatcher/Major years more because they despised Foot and Kinnock than anything else.Many of these people deserted us in 1997 and seemed to think I was a bit mad to be a Conservative during the Hague/IDS be a years.Howard got some back, Cameron seems to have picked up more and Blair and his cronies have driven even more our way. These people could have easily gone to Ming but Cameron has been far far more proactive about capturing their imagination and idealism.
To form a government we absolutely need these people to vote with us. I'm not interested anymore in being in opposition again however idealogically pure I might want the Conservative party to be.
If and when we win power we can use the powerful machinery of government to fight our enemies within the BBC and other media in opposition we simply cannot.

[Andy Stidwill]

This Labour government has been extraodinary lucky over the last 10 years, and it looks to me like that luck is continuing.

The reason I say this is that just when Blair is finally unable to prevent both a Tory lead in the polls and a big one at that, he's due to stand down.

If Blair had been unlucky, this would have happened just before an election in which he was still leader. Instead, Blair's opinion poll lead extended almost exactly over the period in which he needed it in order to be able to win 3 elections in a row.

[Yet Another Anon]

Well, what a result!
Polls are not results, they are a matter of a sample of a few thousand selected by the pollster - people are then asked how they would vote, so if someone feels embarassed about saying what their choice would be then they may well say they are a don't know or say another party; equally people vote in constituencies and what they may say they would vote to a pollster might not reflect considerations of tactical voting locally. If the poll was correct then it would be showing the Liberal Democrat support holding up surprisingly, as for the level it shows the Conservatives on it would not be much higher than at it's peaks in the previous 2 parliaments and only about the same that Labour's was at this point in the 1987-92 parliament, it's 2 years 3 months to the next General Election and while Labour's support is likely to remain low through this year and into the next it is likely to recover to a fair extent in the later stages in this parliament, as for the Local Elections - over the past several years Labour has consistently done very badly in those and yet still won the following General Election.

If the Conservative Party could actually win a parliamentary by-election in a seat they didn't already hold then this might indicate something bigger was happening.

[Yet Another Anon]

Blair's opinion poll lead extended almost exactly over the period in which he needed it in order to be able to win 3 elections in a row.
The first 2 years of the Labour government were a continuation of them basking in removing the Major Administration and the Conservatives actually being close to losing parliamentary seats in by-elections to Labour, things became more difficult with bad Local Election results later and a bad EU election performance followed by "the polls" showing a brief lead for the Conservatives during the fuel protest in Autumn 2000; then in the last parliament there were spells in 2003 and 2004 when Labour had not only bad Local and EU Election results but also bad parliamentary by-election results and low figures at times in the polls that so many are enamoured with - when Tony Blair announced in Autumn 2004 that the next General Election would be his last as Labour leader, the general expectation was that Labour would not win an overall majority and that it was heading towards a Hung Parliament.

[Richard]

"we don't read The Sunday Mirror as attentively at ConservativeHome as we should!)."

I for one shall be buying the Sun all week due to the free horror DVDs they're giving away.

[Editor]

Thank you for that Richard!

[Matt Wright]

Like others we are in the thick of canvassing now and finding interesting results. Firstly we are getting a dinstinctly better response. One of the most interesting things is that we are finding people who are switching straight over from Labour to Conservative. They like the more mainstream approach under Cameron. We have just won a key council by-election in Rhyl East (there has not been a Tory councillor there for 40 years!). Yes we are also finding a small minority who want us to be more "right-wing" but on balance they are heavily outweighed by the net gain of switchers. That said it would pay dividends to idetify an issue to be grittier on to break the 40% mark and really stuff Labour!

Matt

[Annabel Herriott]

Why would anyone want to read either the mirror or the Sunday Mirror - unless they enjoyed viewing naked breasts, and totting up the football scores. Must be a minority interest for the more cerebally inclined.
I'm not surprised the editor missed it.

[John Dowson]

TomTom - "the Global Warming Religion has NO role at all for the sun"

It would be pretty ridiculous if they didn't have any role for the sun... but they do. CO2 and other gases trap the sun's rays in the earth's atmosphere and therefore the planet heats up... that's a very brief, simplistic description of what global warming is.
Human activity has increased the amount of CO2 getting into the atmosphere, therefore making it worse. It's relatively simple and from what I've seen there is scientific evidence to back it up.

[ToMTom]

CO2 and other gases trap the sun's rays in the earth's atmosphere and therefore the planet heats up...

but that's how solar heating has always functioned....otherwise we would be incinerated. The planet would be a frozen wasteland if the sun did not head up the gaseous layers above the earth - it is why we are able to breathe on Earth but not on Mars or the moon

[Yet Another Anon]

The planet would be a frozen wasteland if the sun did not head up the gaseous layers above the earth - it is why we are able to breathe on Earth but not on Mars or the moon
The moon doesn't have enough gravity to have an atmosphere, Mars potentially could be earthlike although colder - gravity is only slightly lower, the solar day is similar in length, the main problem with life on Mars would be that it doesn't have any equivalent of the Van Allen Belts - which means that there is no protection from Gamma Rays, there are small quantities of water on Mars, the atmosphere on earth is as a result of the substantial presence of oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen - Mars has a slightly thinner atmosphere, the problem is that there is very little oxygen on Mars, if oxygen and vegetation could be got going then most of Mars could be habitable - vegetation and cloud cover tends to narrow temperature fluctuations, vegetation helps maintain a good atmosphere - holding stores of water and processing air.

It is thought that Venus which is also a similar size to earth had an oxygen atmosphere at one time but that through major volcanic eruptions over time the air became toxic and there was a run away greenhouse effect.

[Michael McGowan]

Ted, I would love to believe all these things you tell me are going to happen under Cameron but bitter experience of the Tories in office tells me that none of this is likely to occur. George Walden puts it better than I can do:

"In a Cameron government none of our root problems will be tackled. The man who really, really likes his country will tell us that there's nothing wrong with things like health or education that a little benign attention from well-intentioned folk like himself won't put right.....There's something curiously immature about Cameron and his boys - Osborne, Letwin et al. In the first generation of Tory leaders to have lived a life of unremitting ease, perhaps it's not surprising that they appear less than grown-up. They seem completely unformed, clever to no purpose. Now and again they try to put on grave faces but you get the impression that, fof them, running Her Majesty's opposition is a bit of a wheeze."

[comstock]

Apologies for the lateness of posting this (we don't read The Sunday Mirror as attentively at ConservativeHome as we should!).

LOL I'm impressed you read it at all. I happened to visit here yesterday morning and I thought I'd got away with it.

Actually the Sunday Mirror isn't especially political at all, compared with the Daily Mirror (which itself is a shadow of it's 'guts not gutter' days :( )

[formertory]

in your dreams girls!

cameron is too easily got at by his deputy chairman's eco nazi son.

forget the mid term poll lead. tories currently have the benefit of a government in relative dissaray, and the stench of death you talk about is just blair.

when he's gone, the furore will die down and brown will get into his stride.

the time has not yet arrived for traditional tory values, which is just as well as all we've got is cameron with his hitleresque dreams of state control.

there will be a time - let's just hope we have someone up to the task when it comes.

somehow an anti eu, politically correct bunch of eco nazis doesn't sound like a winning formula on the day.

you know it makes sense.

[Alex Forsyth]

I didn't always agree with George Walden, but he was that one thing the current party lacks. A man with a brain.

Anything Walden writes should be read to with more than usual attention, although one surely doesn't need his brains to work out that our party is currently being run by a bunch of excitable, inexperienced, schoolkids.

The great thing about Walden is that he has the prestige and the contacts to get into print what so many of us are thinking.

I sometimes wonder what really motivates some of the overheated Camerloon posters on this site.

Either Ted or Malcolm (I can never remember which one is Tweedledum and which Tweedledee) once suggested that I was either a 'UKIP Troll' (yawn!!!) or, much more intriguingly, that I and other Thatcherites were is a state of denial because once-open doors were being slammed in our faces.

Personally I haven't attempted to push open any party "doors" for many years, but I can only conclude from this curious choice of phraseology that our friends are eagerly waiting for doors to be opened to admit the chosen ones to some presumably remunerative goal.

Notwithstanding the shaky evidence of current polls, they may have a long wait.

[formertory]

"excitable, inexperienced, schoolkids." - well said alex forsyth.

i watched in shocked disbelief when george osborne was trotting out the new tory proposal on flight taxes / restrictions on sunday.

it was as if this fool thought the uk can solve the problem on its own - someone please tell these idiots that global warming is - GLOBAL. unless ay major step is at least agreed by the whole of the eu (some chance!) it will be utterly pointless and ineffective.

what point is there in a small, unimportant country like the uk "taking a lead"? why are we always dogged by a ruling elite that has to play by queesnsbury rules? why do these so called servants heap so much dross on the people of this country simply to bolster thir own feeling of self importance?

if cameron is really a tory in ultra liberal clothing he needs to show some sign. i don't believe it for one. i think he / osborne and letwin are useless would be a total disaster.

excitable inexperienced schoolkids they may be, but schoolkids can cause severe damage if they are given the wherewithal to do it.