Tories are 24% ahead

John Leonard has kindly pointed out that there's an Ipsos-MORI poll which puts the Conservatives on 48% and Labour on 24%.  It's mentioned by The Telegraph.  More as we get it.

21 August 12.30pm Update:

The results of the Ipsos-MORI poll have been confirmed with the release of the figures today:

Conservatives 48%
Labour 24%
Liberal Democrats 16%

Sky News is reporting this as Labour's lowest rating by the pollster since it began its records in 1977. If repeated on a uniform national swing at the next election, Electoral Calculus reports Labour and the Liberal Democrats would lose more than half their seats, and the Conservative majority would be 272.

58% agreed that the Conservatives are ready for office, with narrow leads on education, housing and the environment and a 15% lead on the economy. 75% are dissatisfied with Gordon Brown's performance.

Comments

[Paul D]

24 point lead for us in the middle of the "Beijing Bounce"?

Wow

[Geoff]

"Peking Bounce" doesn't sound quite as good, does it Paul. Lucky they randomly changed the name.

[Tony Makara]

The Brown bounce looks inevitable now! How much longer can they hang on? Still pretending there isn't a mass call for change in the country. Labour need to worry about maintaining enough seats to provide a realistic opposition let alone have any ideas about forming the next government. This lead is so big, it actually threatens our democracy!

[Danielle]

Paul D, that would be the 'John Major Tory Beijing Bounce' surely. Brown is so inept he can't even get credit for good news!

[Callie]

When was this poll conducted?

Maybe Cameron looking like the statesman over Georgia, when Brown was nowhere to be seen, has paid off.

[Edison Smith]

To badly bastardise a famous saying:

It woz Cameron re Georgia/Russia wot did it!

[Tory]

I appreciate all Cameron's efforts in the early years to modernise the Party.

But at this moment in time cannot help wonder if it was all necessary. Looks like the British are doing what they do best, swing home to the Tories after a horrid spell of Labour. Why did DC feel his time at the top was so different? Hadn't he faith in the British electorate to Vote tory if they so wished. Green, environmentalist politics, liberal positions, hug a hoodie...In hindsight, DC should have stuck to a traditional Tory line all along and he'd still achieve the now projected 445 seats! to Labour's 144!

Politics, more specifically economics, were going to win or lose us the electiona nd DC has come at the right time.

It's not too late - you're the next PM anyway - drop the wishy washy left-wing BBC appeasing agenda and roll out some tory policies BRITAIN is ready for the Conservatives again!

[Geoff]

Tony, we've seen leads like this for Labour in the dark days towards the end of our last administration. We've also seen 1980's leads such as this which have given us 100+ seat majorities.

In neither situation has the sky fallen in. They never translate to exact votes cast and the votes are never evenly distributed.

It's great news and should mean that we occupy No10 soon, but I don't think that if half of the country agrees with us that it's "a threat to democracy"!

I'm guessing that your remark was tongue-in-cheek but it's a fun one to respond to.

[Steve]

Meanwhile on Planet Raj.

McLabour will win election - Broon

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/politics/7573432.stm

[Geoff]

Steve, you've made a mistake.

You clicked on the BBC Entertainment\Comedy section by accident.

Still. made me laugh. Cheers.

[Adam]

As Labour now head off into the wilderness the attacks are going to become more desperate and vicous. Cooper's earlier this week was the first of many.

[Justin Hinchcliffe]

Wow - brilliant news! I wonder what the Dim Lebs are on?

[Tony Makara]

Geoff, yes, a tongue in cheek remark, but one that makes me wonder what sort of shape, and what type of direction, a future opposition might take? Its certainly true that the New Labour project is dead, and with the Conservative party occupying the middle ground, Labour can only really go further to the left. The fact that they are ruddeless now shows they are not sure which direction to take. What Labour need is a Conservative government to shoot at, then they can form policy based on that, right now they are like one of those spinning tops that is close to the end of its spin and is rocking before grinding to a complete halt. I certainly won't be sorry to see all those nonentities who collect dust on the backbenches leaving Westminster.

[DanielH]

Mike Smithson on Politicalbetting.com has the following quote - According to Deborah Summers he “..rejected Tory claims that it was now impossible for Labour to win the next election. “We are going to go on and win,” he said. “We are getting on with the job. You will find, as we get into September, that what the people of Britain are concerned about is what’s happening to their mortgages, what’s happening to their gas and electricity bills, what’s happening to oil prices and petrol prices at the pumps. These are the issues they want us to address and look at. You will see us dealing with some of these issues when we come back in September.”

Why only some of them Gordon? Why not all of them?

Does Gordon Brown remind anyone of the character Golden Gordon from the episode of Ripping Yarns? Instead of going home after another defeat and greeting his wife with 8-1, 8 bloody one, you can imagine him going into the cabinet room at Downing Street and saying 24 points, 24 bloody points

[Alan Douglas]

"I certainly won't be sorry to see all those nonentities who collect dust on the backbenches leaving Westminster."

What about those on the FRONT benches ? I've never seen such a bunch of over-promoted parrot-voiced non-entities, each one nailed to its perch, starting right at the top.

Alan Douglas

[ChrisD]

"What about those on the FRONT benches ? I've never seen such a bunch of over-promoted parrot-voiced non-entities, each one nailed to its perch, starting right at the top."

Brilliant Alan Douglas. Made me LOL, and then I realised that they are still in charge.....

[Yogi]

I will stick my neck out here. After the next GE, the LibDems will be the main opposition party and the realignment of politics will be on.

[Treacle]

Yogi

wanna bet?

[Londoner]

Yogi - perhaps Clegg will ask his party conference to go back to their constituencies and prepare for leading the Opposition. I think not. There's life in the old Labour dog yet.

[Yogi]

Treacle and Londoner,

My reckoning is based on the fact that the LibDems will take a swathe of seats in the northern cities and in Scotland and Wales where they are currently second placed - what happened to us in 97 in repeated against NuLab. The LibDems also will lose a dozen of their seats to us, but end up with a net gain of 20 seats - that puts them at around 80. The SNP and PC will take between them 25-30 seats and we win 440. This would leave NuLab perilously close to 80 seats (Ulster not counted).

How about a bottle of Krug for a bet Treacle?

[Sally Roberts]

My betting's with Yogi on this one! Yogi does that mean I get a glass of Krug?

[Comstock]

Dreadful polling numbers. The British people forget so easily :(

[James Maskell]

Georgia wasnt the reason for this. Its economic and financial pressures in Britain that has caused this. The R word scares people.

[Treacle]

Bottle of Krug??

Christ man I don't spend that on me holidays!

But I wil type out 20 times publicly 'Yogi is right and Treacle is wrong' and you can bathe in my humiliation!!

Be happy to do to, it if you're right; but it will tighten up, it always does.

[Yet Another Anon]

Tony, we've seen leads like this for Labour in the dark days towards the end of our last administration.
In the 1980s there were times when the media was certain that the Conservatives were doomed, the government was in a lot of difficulty in Summer and Autumn 1986 - opinion polls then showed Conservative support frequently under 30% and Labour support over 40% and then in 1989/90 at times showed Labour support double Conservative support and not much below the levels they were showing under John Smith and Tony Blair.

Opinion polls on voting intention are at their closest to any kind of accuracy on the night before a General Election usually, but even then they aren't the real thing and reflect people refusing to answer (and who those people are) and people embarrased to admit that they are backing a particular party or just saying what they think that the pollster expects to hear.

Conservative support in the late 1960s and mid/late 1970s was far stronger than now.

As for the strength of the opposition, it is not the function of a party seeking government to attempt to build up opposition to itself, this is just craziness.

[Tony Makara]

" Conservative support in the late 1960s and mid/late 1970s was far stronger than now. "

That's a very interesting point actually. Currently I'm curious as to what Labour could do to reverse the trend expressed in the polls, whether its exaggerated or not there is definitely a feeling that they have literally run out of ideas. The focus has been built on the Blair/Brown camps for so long that no alternative intellectual thread has developed in the party. It seems only opposition will get Labour into thinking-mode once again.

[Mark Williams]

Very suspicios about the Electoral Calculus numbers as they seem to understate the SNP position in Scotland. The map still shows vast swathes of red across Central Scotland, when surely their should be more than a handful of green.

[Votedave]

"Conservative support in the late 1960s and mid/late 1970s was far stronger than now."

It may have been but there are arguments against this. Before 1983 the Liberals and others were nowhere, now they are polling over 30% of the vote which will inevitably affect the Tory and Labour share. Polling methodology distort the figures.
Actually, at no point in the 1970s were the plus-20% Tory leads sustained for as long as they have been in 2008. It was between 1967-1969 though.

[Yet Another Anon]

Before 1983 the Liberals and others were nowhere, now they are polling over 30% of the vote which will inevitably affect the Tory and Labour share.
The Liberal and SNP big surge was in the February 1974 General Election when Labour and Conservative support collapsed.

The Liberal Party dropped to 14% in 1979, but then again the Liberal Democrats dropped to 16% in 1997. The Liberal Democrats have never managed the support in General Elections that the Alliance got in 1983 or 1987 when 7 million people were voting Alliance, their 2005 success was largely based on low turnout and as a percentage only just back up to the Alliance's 1987 percentage vote.

All 3 main parties have been weak since 1997, the 3 party vote as a whole has dropped and it isn't just down to the SNP even. In 2001 the Liberal Democrats only got about the same percentage vote they got in 1992, the 2005 vote of the Liberal Democrats in total numbers was only just very nearly back to where it had been in 1992, Liberal Democrat vote remains weak but benefits from being more concentrated, but recent signs are that the Liberal Democrats are having quite poor performances in all levels of elections despite being an opposition party.

[Tony Makara]

Yet Another Anon, do you think the fall off in voting is a disillusionment with the representative system itself? I certainly feel that a governing elite has developed in which politicians see themselves as a kind of politicus maximus. People are becoming tired of the tribalism, the point-scoring and are looking for consensus, even, dare I say, looking for a form of national government.

As voting patterns gravitate towards the centre ground parties should see that as a sign that the age of ideology is over. People now want pragmatic government and with that one has to wonder how long the current divisive party political system can survive? If the Conservative party continues to occupy the centre ground Labour will either have to move to the left, making them unelectable, or fight to occupy the centre ground. The politics of merger, and with it the end of political parties is inevitable. The 21st century will surely see the existing party political structures pass away into history?

[Conand]

Tony, the Conservatives have been around in four centuries. Don't count us out yet!

[Tony Makara]

Conand, I just feel that political parties have outlived their usefulness and actually divide the country, getting in the way of effective government. If we are to unite our nation then we need to adopt a corporate system of government in which political parties are replaced by a national government that delegates power and in so doing rolls back the state. The NHS and Education for example are areas in which ministerial interference has caused great damage. Far better that these bodies govern themselves from within their own ranks and have more operational independence. Of course there has to be government, but there are areas where government can step back, and should.

[Yet Another Anon]

Yet Another Anon, do you think the fall off in voting is a disillusionment with the representative system itself?
It's the obsession with presenting a particular image in the main, people want solutions to problems that have been vigorously thought about and argued, instead of which they feel that they are being given a sort of papp for easy consumption.

There was for the 2 main parties also the problem that Trade Union based politics is of the past, elements of the Labour Party don't realise this, with the Conservative Party the patricians had become rather discredited, people really want something with a more radical edge and instead the UK seems currently to have 3 Liberal Parties of different sorts when perhaps the public is moving towards a sort of Progressivist-Conservative split with Liberalism and Socialism gone for good, and a return to more traditional approaches to punishment of criminals generally, an end of welfarism and in terms of public spending a return to small government and an end to toleration of anti-social and terrorist elements.

[Dave McEwan Hill]

Treacle
Its worth noting that present polling indicates that the LibDems will lose seats in Scotland to the SNP and there is a drift back of soft Tories from the LibDems to the Tory Party. LibDems in Scotland are barely achieving double figures at the moment.
It's very hard to call what will happen in Scotland as all the old moulds are now broken but it very much looks like a retreat by LibDem and Labour and a moderate improvement in Tory fortunes, though it is entirely possible that many Tories will vote SNP to get Labour out.
The SNP could end up with half the vote and half the seats.
Time to go yet however.