The Tories are on 41% (unchanged), Labour 32% (down 3%) and the LibDems on 14% (up 1%).
8.15pm: I'm also hearing that a Times poll has trust in Labour's economic competence down from 61% to 28%. Amazing.
9.45pm: Direct from Sky: "The number of voters who trust Gordon Brown and Chancellor Alistair Darling more than David Cameron and George Osborne to deal with economic problems in the months and years ahead has fallen from 61% in September to 16%. Trust in the Tory leader and shadow chancellor has gone up from 27% to 34%. But the number of people who said they did not trust either team, or did not know which they trusted, has tripled from 12% to 37%. People are less certain of the Government's competence - 56% said they were capable in September, that has fallen to 25% now. Voters also think Labour is less honest and principled than before. 37% thought they were in September, only 20% did by Wednesday night."
Friday morning (graphic added):
fantastic, but no complacency. We've got years to fight this government.
Incidentally, seems fieldwork done before datagate.
Posted by: activist | November 22, 2007 at 19:51
That's an overall majority if you believe electoral calculus.
Still I vaguely remember worse polls for the incumbant govt. than this in the late 80s- and they still held on in 92
Hard to believe we were on election alert only a few weeks ago- but things can swing back just as quickly.
Posted by: Comstock | November 22, 2007 at 20:01
What with two slipped discs not to mention Wednesday noon high blood pressure, toothache, memory lapse (who was chancellor for the past ten years?), somebody needs a good NHS.
Yet still some people thing Gordon is "doing well".
Posted by: Sam R | November 22, 2007 at 20:11
Confidence in Labour seems in steady (but not dramatic) decline - 32% was about where they were before the Brown bounce. Conservatives seem to have plateaued at round about 41% for a few weeks now. Over 40% is of course very good news, but the big thing now is to convince the electorate that Conservatives can be trusted. At the moment it looks like they want to chuck out Brown - but are maybe not yet convinced Cameron will cut it.
Posted by: Oscar Miller | November 22, 2007 at 20:11
Oscar, YG does not weight by likelihood to vote. I gather this was taken post discgate. But the Times poll is more significant, Brown has traded on his reputation for competence, that has evaporated. When a govt is seen as incompetent on the economy they are toast
Posted by: activist | November 22, 2007 at 20:15
Surely the fieldwork for this poll will have been done largely before the discs went missing, if not entirely before. If this had been done in three or four days time the result might have been rather different.
Posted by: Votedave | November 22, 2007 at 20:18
According to UK Polling it was a snap poll. I think??? that means it may not be of the usual sampling size. I wonder how the "snappiness" of it affects the field work.
Posted by: Northernhousewife | November 22, 2007 at 20:27
No, the fieldwork was yesterday and today. However, this is just the immediate reaction to the news. These things usually take time to sink in. I expect the next few polls to be even better for us and worse for Labour. But I am with Activist - no complacency!
By the way, YouGov don't weight by likelihood to vote, so tend to give Labour a higher rating than other pollsters.
Posted by: Peter Harrison | November 22, 2007 at 20:28
Northernhousewife - sample size was 1600, so well up to normal standards.
Posted by: Peter Harrison | November 22, 2007 at 20:30
Great news, but we shouldn't dwell on these we've all seen how volatile the polls are. Labour are rotting from the inside out and their years of restructuring are bearing them their poisoned fruits
Posted by: YMT | November 22, 2007 at 20:32
Yes, Anthony Wells confirms it was a snap poll. I await the next few polls with anticipation.
This IS good news - YouGov has never given us such a large lead.
Posted by: Votedave | November 22, 2007 at 20:33
This is all good. It's easy to get caught up in the bigger, abstract picture, but I've been doing some work this week on the ground in a marginal constituency where boundary changes - if anything - would favour Labour.
The most common response I'm seeing though is either outright Tory support or 'Voted Labour in 2005, but am now considering voting Conservative.'
Danny Finklestein said on Newsnight last night, much to Paxman's evident disappointment, that he sensed a change of mood in the country. From what I've seen, I'd certainly second that thought.
Posted by: Edison Smith | November 22, 2007 at 20:55
Thank you Peter. I am still learning "poll speak"
Posted by: Northernhousewife | November 22, 2007 at 20:58
Its the end of the beginning of our fight back to save our country. These figures give us hope, but there's a long way to go.
We must be relentless in opposition. The good news is that the shadow cabinet seem to have found their stride, and some of our analysis is now being accepted in the wider public.
Posted by: Man in a Shed | November 22, 2007 at 21:05
[Quote: Edison] but I've been doing some work this week on the ground in a marginal constituency where boundary changes - if anything - would favour Labour.[/quote]
The only seat that I can think of where that is the case is in Harrow West. The reason being that the boundry changes have seen the three strongest Conservative council wards move into the Ruslip, Northwood and Pinner ward. I might be wrong though but that is the only seat that I can think of at this moment in time.
Posted by: Paul Seery | November 22, 2007 at 21:14
God, If that's happening in Harrow West with a candidate who does no work, then maybe there really is hope.
Posted by: C List and Proud | November 22, 2007 at 21:21
This day has been coming, no government can be as incompetent as Labour and get away with it forever. Now the Conservative party must keep its discipline and appear ready as the government-in-waiting. Labour have been so lucky over the last decade and have got away with so much, but now its a case of one big blunder too many. Its time to finish them off, its time for change.
Posted by: Tony Makara | November 22, 2007 at 21:29
This would have been a whit more credible had the Channel 4 presenter not been so obsessed with insisting that "We asked 1,600 people ..." and this is "the biggest lead Channel 4 pollsters have given" the Tories (Doncha just lurve that "given"?). I try to be dispassionate about such things, but I received the direct impression that this was a "What d'you want us to find, guv?" poll.
And, let's be honest: after the shellacking the Government has taken this while, it's only nine percentage points adrift... and that's a vote of confidence in all things Tory? At a similar state of play, in the mid 1990s, when the boot was on the other foot, the Labour figures were in the high 40s.
Meanwhile, the truly surreal moment was (remember, in a Channel 4 item on data and security) a clear image of the registration plate of the prime ministerial Jaguar. Just to make sure the message was received and understood, the digital repeat an hour later did it again.
Posted by: Malcolm Redfellow | November 22, 2007 at 21:53
Where are MH/Traditional Tory/Cleo etc when polls like this one are published?
Had the results gone the other way you can imagine the bleating and whining.
Posted by: Malcolm Dunn | November 22, 2007 at 22:03
so ed, does that now mean people think labour's competence on the economy is 16% not 28% or is this not true?
Posted by: spagbob | November 22, 2007 at 22:04
Under Brown's incompetent leadership Labour are heading for meltdown. Do we really have to suffer another 2 awful years of this lame-duck administration or will the increasingly paranoid and embattled Brown behave in characteristic fashion and bottle out?
With the economy heading for the rocks, 25 million people frightened they will fall victim to fraudsters, and now the military attacking him I doubt that Brown will last much longer unless the heat dies down considerably. sadly for him, there's every sign it's going to get considerably hotter for him.
Posted by: anyone but brown | November 22, 2007 at 23:23
Where are MH/Traditional Tory/Cleo etc when polls like this one are published?
Don't worry, Malcolm, I'm around, and I wouldn't put the champagne on ice just yet if I were you.
Just because Brown and co are making a colossal mess of things doesn't mean that I find the three-headed Cameron-Osborne-Gove hydra one jot more appealing than I did before the new spin doctor dug them out of the mess they were in before the phantom election.
And didn't darling Boris make a total prat of himself on Radio 4 this lunchtime?
Posted by: Traditional Tory | November 22, 2007 at 23:31
Note that of the 3% Labour drop only 1% went to the LDs so 2% went to others (to whom we'll have to wait and see). None went to the Tories.
But if I may repeat my usual warning - Until you know the full poll which the papers never publish you'll not know if there has been an upsurge or a diminution in the "refuse to say's - the 'won't vote's and the Don't knows. That usually takes about 2 to 3 working days - so Tuesday or Wednesday perhaps.
Posted by: Christina Speight | November 22, 2007 at 23:52
And, let's be honest: after the shellacking the Government has taken this while, it's only nine percentage points adrift...
This is a fair point - Blair's Labour were ahead in the polls by rarely less than 10%, usually 15-20% and I remember one (admittedly rogue) poll at the nadir of Major's government putting Labour an incredible 40% ahead!
However, on a more positive note, interesting the comparisons drawn with 92. It's often been pointed out that Labour should have won in 92 but unexpectedly didn't, meaning that the Conservatives reaped the whirlwind of Black Wednesday etc. If the Tories had lost in 92 they'd have been back in 96-97 and probably still in power now.
Surely the ideal thing would be for Brown to win the next election (with a wafer thin majority, like Major's), forcing him to sort out the mess he's created, leaving Cameron to inherit at the election after next by which time the country truly will be sick of Labour and they'll then be out for a generation.
The danger of a Conservative victory this time is that (whether fairly or not) the blame will shift to the incumbents as it always does, allowing Labour to benefit and come back stronger next time. A repeat of Heath in 1974, basically.
Posted by: Vernon | November 23, 2007 at 00:03
Vernon, interesting points. I think Labour are looking at a very long time in opposition, if they ever get back in at all. The big problem Labour face is that they have mow become so complacent that they have lost the ability to formulate policy and will have to go into opposition to get their thinking caps on again. No doubt once the Conservative government sets about implementing its policy objectives the Labour party in opposition will have something to aim at. Currently they are intellectually bankrupt and can't create new policies. They are burnt-out and need a break.
Posted by: Tony Makara | November 23, 2007 at 00:16
Still I vaguely remember worse polls for the incumbant govt. than this in the late 80s- and they still held on in 92
And 1980 as well, in fact the media generally pronounced the government heading for defeat in 1985-86 as well based on "the polls", and I remember in 2004 supposedly a hung parliament being almost certain. In 1992 the Conservatives were declared by the media to be the natural party of government, and it was said they would hold an early election to increase their majority, in 1975 the media pronounced Labour the natural party of government. In 1970 and February 1974 the incumbents were expected to win and didn't, in 1964 Labour only scraped in and in 1979 the margin of victory was much less than that expected at the time of the calling of the General Election, in 1995-97 supposedly the Conservatives were heading for almost total wipeout on the scale of the Canadian Liberal Party.
In 1951 Labour got what was it's best vote ever and only lost because of how their vote was distributed - with current patterns of distribution of vote on a 48.8% to 48% margin Labour would have won a third term then.
The Liberal and Alliance surges in 1974 andn in 1983 were followed by substantial reversal in their fortunes and the Liberal Democrat vote in 2005 was lower than any of the votes the Alliance got, in fact they are not as popular as the Liberal Party were in 1974, rather they have benefited from a weakening of the 2 main parties.
It is still slightly over 1.5 years until the General Election though, even in 1945-50 the government position improved slightly at the end of the parliament.
Surely the ideal thing would be for Brown to win the next election (with a wafer thin majority, like Major's), forcing him to sort out the mess he's created, leaving Cameron to inherit at the election after next by which time the country truly will be sick of Labour and they'll then be out for a generation.
Things don't always work that way, if Labour is able to form a minority government, or even if there is a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, it would still be quite possible for Labour to win a 100 seat majority at the following General Election, majorities can go up and down, indeed the 1983 General Election improved on the 1979 majority although it fell after. In the 1950s the Conservative majority went up at each General Election. There were times in the 19th century in which majority governments became minorities and then restored majorities.
Labour could lose it's majority and the Conservatives could still be a long way short of even 300 seats - David Cameron is not going to inherit anything, to win the Conservatives have to fight and I still believe it will be a more vigorous leader who abandons the EU and holds to a far more socially Conservative position and low tax low spending position that will sweep the Conservatives back into power some time between 2018 and 2024 - Priti Patel most likely.
I don't see Labour returning to the big majorities of 1997 or 2001, but the Conservatives still have a long way to go.
I remember one (admittedly rogue) poll at the nadir of Major's government putting Labour an incredible 40% ahead
Which just shows how unreliable polls are - a 40% lead in Labour support is absurd, it has never been the case, there has never been a time in which the Conservative vote would have dropped below 25% of the Popular Vote and there has never been a time the Labour vote would have been above 50% of the Popular Vote. I do not believe that at any time in the 20th or so far at the 21st century would the Conservatives have gone below 30% of the Popular Vote at a General Election, and I don't think that there has been any time since 1966 in which Labour might have reached 50% of the Popular Vote.
If the Tories had lost in 92 they'd have been back in 96-97 and probably still in power now.
Maybe, but maybe John Biffen was right and Neil Kinnock would have got a second term in 1996 and then retired in 1999 or so with Tony Blair or Gordon Brown then coming to the fore with New Labour.
It's speculation anyway, the fact is that it didn't happen - maybe if the Conservatives had won more narrowly in 1992 then John Major would have abandoned any attempt to introduce the Maastricht Treaty, or maybe John Redwood would have won the 1995 leadership election, if John Redwood had won, maybe a new direction could have seen a revived Conservative Party increasing it's majority in 1996 or 1997 and Labour by 2005 being a permanent opposition merely having to satisfy itself with slowing a continuing revolution of free market policies and stricter social Conservatism?
Mayber if John Major had 10 heads he would have formed a choir?
Posted by: Yet Another Anon | November 23, 2007 at 00:42
"Where are MH/Traditional Tory/Cleo etc when polls like this one are published?
Had the results gone the other way you can imagine the bleating and whining."
Where indeed, the last time I asked (about cleo) I got a lecture from someone about how 'my conservative party' lost 3 elections despite the fact that I am not a traditionalist.
Posted by: Dale | November 23, 2007 at 06:20
The polls will continue to swing as long as we continue to address the real issues which are out there.
Tim, can we have a separate thread dedicated to the state of the military?
Recently I posted here that the scandal which is now unfolding of the government's treatment of the armed forces has the potential to bring down Gordon Brown.
I accept that the HMRC debacle has taken the forefront, but we seem to be almost totally silent on this other appalling situation - leaving the armed forces to stage their own fight for the finance and support they are being starved of.
The desperate state of the armed forces, whose very survival may now be threatened by years of government's neglect, and Brown's defiant refusal to heed the continued security warnings given to him for months about deteriorating security in government which has been evidenced by the loss of the HMRC database, are no longer issues for political point scoring or advantage. We are well beyond that.
We now have a duty which transcends politics to save this country and its people, before the damage becomes irreparable.
This from today's Times:
""Amazing battle scenes in the Lords as a debate on defence turned nasty. Actually I think the Armed Forces have declared war — on their own Government. Yesterday it was not so much “we will fight them on the beaches” as “we will fight them on the benches”. The red benches, that is.
The attack was launched from land, sea and air by no fewer than five former Chiefs of the Defence Staff. I believe this is what the Americans call a “surge”. I understand it has been given the codename Operation Destroy Reputations.
They already have the Prime Minister on the run. Literally. For I couldn’t help but notice that Gordon Brown had not only fled the building but the country. As the military men attacked, he was sheltering in Uganda under the thin excuse of attending a Commonwealth summit. But everyone in the Lords knew the truth.
General Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank certainly did. He had been chief of the defence staff from 1997 to 2001. “He was the most unsympathetic Chancellor, as far as defence was concerned. The only time he came to the MoD while I was there, I recall, was when he came to talk about the Rosyth dockyard, which was in his constituency. He must take much of the blame for the very serious situation in which we find the services today.”
No wonder Gordo was in Kampala. But if the Prime Minister was viewed with suspicion, Des Browne was treated with outright derision. Des’s crime is to have been appointed to two jobs: he is Defence Secretary and also Scottish Secretary. Thus his military knickname, “Two Jobs Des”. There was no sight of him yesterday. I’m sure Des had fled to somewhere safer, like Iraq.
Admiral Lord Boyce attacked Des and his multitasking. “This is seen as an insult by our soldiers on the front line and I know this because I have reason to speak to them a lot,” he said, his words biting so hard that you could see the teethmarks. “It is a demonstration of the disinterest and some might say contempt the Prime Minister and his Government have for our Armed Forces. It shows an appalling lack of judgment at a time when our people are being killed and being maimed.”
The Admiral stood tall, a furious figurehead determined to plough the murky waters of defence spending. He annhilated the claim that there had been any real increases in the defence budget. What about the replacement for Trident? Now that had to be accommodated, too.
It was all “smoke and mirrors”. “If I were to cut to the truth, we will find it is actually negative, especially if one extracts the £550 million to be spent on the slum accommodation which should have been replaced years ago.”
There were, incredibly, only two peers on the Labour benches. Perhaps they feared an ambush which, actually, was about right. Lord Boyce was still on the warpath. “This negative budget is why if you go to the MoD today you will find blood on the floor as the defence programme is slashed to meet the desperate funding situation.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article2925980.ece""
Posted by: Patriot | November 23, 2007 at 08:51
"Where are MH/Traditional Tory/Cleo etc when polls like this one are published?
Had the results gone the other way you can imagine the bleating and whining."
They seem to have returned to the Blue Brownite bunker, I always assumed the were professional Labour 'social network marketing executives'
Posted by: Sub-Prime Minister Brown | November 23, 2007 at 10:50
The 1990s are not really a model for what's happening now. There is no equivalent to the formidable (and dirty) anti-Tory juggernaut mounted by NuLab - the Mandelson, Campbell, Brown machine, backed by Guardian/BBC journos. The anti-Tory 'sleaze' campaign (crucifying some perfectly innocent people in the process) did untold damage. It achieved massive swings to Lab (posing as the squeaky clean party) but it also laid the rotten culture of NuLab - the whirlwind they're now reaping. They also managed to trade on Black Tuesday to massive effect, despite the strong foundations for economic growth that was paying dividends under Ken Clarke. What is tearing Brown apart now is genuinely of his own making. Not some Tory party spin machine. The economy really is on the rocks and conservatives have not yet recovered their reputation. Nor is there the media support for the Conservatives that Labour had in the 1990s. For these reasons I don't think we'll see the massive swings of the 1990s. Conservatives will have a slow hard slog to regain public confidence - unfortunately NuLab are not only destroying themselves - they've set up a mistrust in government altogether that will take years of patient work to overcome.
Posted by: Oscar Miller | November 23, 2007 at 11:17
"They also managed to trade on Black Wednesday to massive effect, despite the strong foundations for economic growth"
This is so true. There was an article in the Telegraph, writen by a Brown aide, this week that claimed that Black Wednesday was caused by 'Tory incompetence'. This is absolute nonsense; the exact same thing would have happened if Labour had been in power at the time. Yet, we get nuLab ministers broadcasting to the world that is was caused by us. It is about time someone asked Labour how they would have avoided Black Wednesday if they had been in power at the time.
Posted by: TimC | November 23, 2007 at 11:43
TimC - God knows I'm no Labour apologist, but I'm guessing they would say that we shouldn't have joined the ERM in the first place, and when things started to go south we should have got out before we did - and they would be right, wouldn't they? But how far back in history do they have to go to find something a Conservative did wrong? And so what?
Brown did it at PMQs when he tried to suggest that the loss of the HMRC CDs was the fault of the Conservatives.
What this actually does is reveal the shallowness of Labour when their only defence is to refer to things which happened X years ago. The fact is that David, I think, is beginning to convince voters that whatever they may have thought in the past things have moved on.
It's the petulant politics of the school playground, and the electorate are beginning to see through it.
Posted by: Patriot | November 23, 2007 at 12:01
They also managed to trade on Black Tuesday to massive effect
Ooops I'm getting my black Tuesdays and Wednesdays all in a twist - I meant of course Black Wednesday.
Posted by: Oscar Miller | November 23, 2007 at 12:38
God knows I'm no Labour apologist, but I'm guessing they would say that we shouldn't have joined the ERM in the first place
Gordon Brown was a staunch supporter of joining ERM - and would have faced exactly the same outcome if he'd been in power.
Posted by: Oscar Miller | November 23, 2007 at 12:41
Oscar, then they would say that we should have got out before we pushed the interest rate to an eye watering 15%. Look, I don't want to fall out with you over Black Wednesday - and we as a party shouldn't get into a similar debate with Labour because it really doesn't matter - right or wrong the important thing is it's old news featuring people who aren't in the shadow front bench today or any other place where they could be in power should the Conservatives win the next election. It's an irrelevance.
What's next, will they defend the debacle in Iraq by saying that Anthony Eden screwed up when he invaded Egypt during the Suez crisis in '56? Will Brown's support for any future attack on Iran be justified because Churchill approved the overthrow of Mossadegh in '53?
What matters to the lives of people in the UK today is that Labour are a car crash of a government, slipping from one disaster of their own making to the next.
Where Brown is at the moment the more he flails around pointing at things that some Conservative Minister or other did more than ten years ago the more evident it becomes that he's rapidly sliding towards a complete melt down.
Posted by: Patriot | November 23, 2007 at 14:09
Patriot, I totally agree with you.
It just amazes me the way Labour distort history - one of Brown's aides wrote a column claiming that 'Tory mismanagement' lead to Black Wednesday which led to large numbers of house repossessions.
The facts were that as Labour also wanted to join the ERM, Black Wednesday would have happened if they had been in power and that the economic conditions that followed Black Wednesday led to an improving economic situation compared to those countries that had remained in the ERM.
But when have facts stopped Labour from spinning a soundbite?
Posted by: TimC | November 23, 2007 at 15:04
The Guardian have just posted a short article about a further poll in tonight with the headline "Brown bounce wiped out...."
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/story/0,,2216192,00.html
And if you want to read about the next tsunami which is about to hit Brown read Robert Fox's article which has just been posted here:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/robert_fox/2007/11/what_a_carrier_on.html
Posted by: Patriot | November 23, 2007 at 19:10