More voters now oppose ID cards

...That's perhaps the most interesting finding from two opinion polls that appear tomorrow.

BPIX for the Mail on Sunday find 46% opposed to ID cards and 43% in favour.  I'm grateful to John Leonard and UK Polling Report for the advance knowledge.

BPIX has the Conservatives on 40% (-1%) and Labour on 35% (-2%).  No LibDem number in the MoS piece.  Because of BPIX's irregular pubblication we don't include it within ConservativeHome's Poll of Polls but it is a poll that generally echoes YouGov's findings.  BPIX have (imo) a pretty worthless question about the parties' standing if Blair was still PM.  For the record they'd both be on 37%.

Of those who express an opinion... most voters told BPIX that Gordon Brown is more incompetent than John Major  and that Alistair Darling is a worse Chancellor than Norman Lamont.

A Creston poll (related to ICM according to Anthony Wells (so it must be true!)) for the News of the World finds that 49% want Alistair Darling to resign.  The poll also finds the Tories and Labour level on 38%.  Do I believe that?  No!

More in the morning...

Comments

[Mr Angry]

I don't find the ID Cards result surprising at all. Everywhere that I have been this week, since HMRC lost 25 million people's personal information, people of all political hues have been making the same negative connection, between that irresponsible loss of data and the proposed ID Card and its database. The inference drawn by all of them, irrespective of party or politics, was that Government just cannot be trusted with that much personal information in one place and that incompetence will ruin the whole scheme.

It may, in a delicious irony, just turn out that a scapegoated 20 something junior civil servant is the ultimate hero of the No To ID Cards campaign.

[Tony Makara]

The main argument for Labour's ID cards is that they will help stop terrorism. Do Labour seriously believe that organizations like Al-Qaeda are not capable of making flawless fake ID cards? This ID card scheme is more about a government controlling its people than any war-on-terror. After the Labour government lost the personal data of 25 million people the idea of any ID card scheme is completely absurd.

[Patriot]

I was delighted to learn that William Haugue confirmed recently that if elected a Conservative government will scrap the ID card scheme. I sense that the electorate are looking, and hoping, for more firm committments from the Conservatives. This one needs more visibility.

[Chad Noble]

"was delighted to learn that William Haugue confirmed recently that if elected a Conservative government will scrap the ID card scheme."

Buy surely he cannot make such an unequivocal pledge, as there are a series of 'ifs' that could occur before then, like the Government being forced to review it following a greater shift in public opposition as above etc.

Why do the 'ifs' only stop firm Tory pledges on EU policy.....

[Opinicus]

No I don't believe it either but shouldn't we be getting better numbers than this, given everything that's happened?

The sentiment of the entire political class has moved decisively against Labour for the first time since 1993. Many sections of the formally loyal and subservient press and media are openly contemptuous. Yet we are not reaching ordinary voters in anything like the same way and if LibDems numbers pick up with a new leader a lot of even our current lead will diminish. There are still too many "others" and too many "will not vote". We are even losing by-elections at local level!

As I have complained for 18mths, we are simply not energising the real electorate. The minute we give them red (or blue) meat as in the IHT promise, we get a flurry of activity in the polls and then we sink back into seven wasted weeks of inertia and the electorate goes back to sleep. If they don't believe we are going to improve anything they are not going to vote for us. That is the lesson of the last 18 mths.

Yes I am aware that there have been policy announcements over the last 7 weeks but they have not moved the polls. Ergo: they are the wrong or insufficient policy announcements. People are no longer satisfied with promises to waste more of their money, nor fooled by promises of administrative reform or improved managerialism (although God knows there is enough scope for that at the moment).

IMHO only the localism agenda is likely to really work. Promise to return power to the people and we might be trusted to run things for them. This means more referenda - on the EU Treaty (even after we are elected) and on issues of conscience currently reserved to MPs eg hunting hanging GM foods cloning abortion. It means a federal parliament. It means education vouchers and health vouchers. It means electing Police Commissioners so that voters can force them to concentrate on burglars, not speeding motorists.

No change no chance.

[Yet Another Anon]

BPIX have (imo) a pretty worthless question about the parties' standing if Blair was still PM. For the record they'd both be on 37%
Not only affected by usual things affecting surveys of opinions on existing politicians standing for office, but also adding in nostalgia and other false recollections of past times.

[Erasmus]

In the short term, we don't do that well out of Government disasters because our main asset -- David Cameron -- drops out of the public eye.

It is positive coverage of ourselves that is the key to victory

[Simon R.]

I can't BELIEVE that some people still think id cards are a good idea. We are dealing with MORONS.

[Malcolm Dunn]

A few short months ago it was seen even by some on this blog that support for ID Cards indicated that Labour was being 'tougher on terrorism' than those who opposed them within the Conservative Party. How times have changed!

[Tanuki]

"Tough on Terrorism" means a non-politically-manipulated judiciary confident enough to be handing down life-sentences for those convicted (without the risk of the criminals getting off by way of 'human rights act' appeals) and a prison-system with enough capacity to ensure that 'life really means life'.

ID-cards don't help this in any way.

[Yet Another Anon]

ID cards were always more for show than anything else, the important bit was the national database including biometric data such as retinal scans, this will help prevent identity fraud because of the uniqueness of what is being recorded in that the chances of more than one person having it identically are fantastically improbable. However certainly it is not acceptable for details of millions of people to go missing whether through private companies or public companies.

This means improving security measures and monitoring of how it is handled, whatever is neccessary to ensure data security has to be done, even if this means the security services and intelligence services bugging the homes and offices of Civil Service employees and even introducing strict punishments for those releasing information whether deliberately or not, including possibility of use of Capital Punishment.