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I think next week we should make the judgement.

I bet some of the trolls will be back though...

Wait and see... it will take time for reality to sink in.

People will realise the VAT will largely not be passed on (for practical pricing reasons if nothing else), and that the PBR has done nothing to put money in peoples pockets - which is the only way to restore confidence and the economy!

A Cllr - I agree. Don't you get the feeling some of these trolls never deliver a single leaflet or ever do anything active to help the party?

On the poll - about what we'd expect at the moment.

If we can continue to develop plans to get credit to small businesses, that would be a major plus.

I'm a little wary of attacking proposed VAT increases in the future, though. We may need to do it as a least worst option. But highlighting the incompetence that made it necessary is needed.

"Labour 13 short of a majority" - to think it has come to this. Holy Cow.

See, here they come.....

A poll with us 11 points in front and they don't say anything. Osborne gets praised and they don't say anything. International financial experts attack Brown and they don't say anything.

Its the libdems wot does it.

Tories on 40+% is still good - just need to ensure that libdem supporters remain stupid and keep voting for them instead of the brand-new-old-labour.

p.s. I read that brown and darling would not be at PBR debate, and treasury announced that 'PM' was soley responsible for ministerial appointments... Suggestion that Darlings shame threshold has been crossed and he has had enough of being browns puppet and fall guy...

Political Betting site was reporting the poll was done before the PBR. If we continue to put our message across as well as we have recently then this will change. A good reason to put up a strong opposition fight and get to the truth.

I don't believe this poll. Tory support is higher, Labour, lower.

Just to remind you it was Thatcher who came into power promising no VAT increase, and then doubled VAT. Labour obviously considered increasing VAT to 18.5%, but they've kept by very specific tax promises in the pass. The 45% rate will only occur after the electorate has had a chance to vote on it. I don't believe they would increase it if they say they won't.

UK Polling Report says "The poll was conducted Monday evening and today, so was entirely after the PBR," That is NOT how YouGov conducts its polls.

Respondents are generally given at least 36 hours to return the online questionnaire which accounts partly for YouGov's low refusal rate.

Since the information only trickled out from 5pm onwards and to get this all in, collated, weighted, analysed and provided with a commentary in a standardised report by 10pm tonight it can be only be a shoddy job, and totally unlike YouGov's normal meticulousness. I personally will discount it as bad research.

The 'Leak' talks about a VAT increase from 2011. I noticed that when Darling was questioned about it this evening on Television, he limited himself to confirming that VAT would be reduced to 15% and returned to 17.5% in 2010. He didn't mention anything about 2011.

Why on earth does anyone trust Gordon Brown with our economy? He's ruined it! And he's going to ruin it some more! Polls like this shatter my faith in the country...

I refuse to beleve the Lib Dems are as low as that. It doesn't feel like that on the ground, where the momentum is stupendous. There's still time to overtake Labour before chrismas, and then turn biggest guns on the Tories.
There's still over a year and half to go, so watch out for a Lib Dem victory! Vince cable has all the answers to everything.

I smell a rat over this VAT hike. A number of reliable commentators had already pointed out there were gaps in Darlings calculations. Its looking increasingly like they had played games with taking options in and out but knew there was a gap. These were options to make up the gap that they tried to hide. Everybody and his dog knows Labour are going to hike up taxes even more than they claim and since the borrowing is eye-watering then we are in for a rough ride.

Further to my earlier post, going back through pb comments, it seems that the view was that some polling was before the PBR and some just after it. I still think its fair to say it doesn't really reflect the mood about the PBR yet. Lets see what it looks like in a week or so one way or another.

What really matters is how we're doing in the marginals. If this is Labour stacking up support in their safe seats then we're in the clear. Would still like to see us a few points higher thiugh.

Someone reported on PB.com yesterday that they had been emailed about a YouGov poll that had a deadline of 3pm, before the PBR.

But this one appears to have been conducted immediately after the PBR was delivered, what a waste of money! After 11 years of Gordon Brown's sleight of hand budgets , did any newspaper really think that it would not be at least 48 hours before all the nasties hidden away were uncovered?

It took me two days last time to realise how badly my household got screwed in the last budget. And I was using the Beeb's calculator, but even they still took a couple of days to digest all the implications of the small print.
Some people didn't even realise that they had been effected by the 10p tax con for nearly a year.

On the issue of the story tonight about an increase in VAT at a later date, it looking like the clunking fist got his paws on Darling's "lets be totally honest Budget(no PBR, this is an emergency budget).

Benedict Brogan on the The bombshell is the £100bn black hole.

" Alistair Darling proposed raising VAT above the current 17.5pc rate in 2011, to 18.5pc. This would have raised a useful £5bn a year. The sums were done, the paperwork was duly drawn up, including the statutory instrument to implement the change and the accompanying explanatory memorandum. The increase would be presented as part of the package voters would be asked to endorse at the next election.

Late last week Gordon Brown vetoed the idea (you may recall my reports of disputes between No10 and No11 on quite how candid the Treasury should be about the pain ahead). It was shelved, and in the hours before the hastily revised PBR was sent to the printers, officials had to delete all references from the reams of documents ready to be released on Monday. Unfortunately for the Treasury, some were missed, most glaringly the one making great waves tonight (some might say this was the accident waiting to happen to a system governed by Global Gordon's inability to make up his mind)."

Also worth reading this other blog entry from Benedict about the Warning: Labour will cut £37bn from public services.
"The IFS have worked out that the revised 1.2pc growth rate of public spending, coupled with the freeze in capital investment means Gordon Brown will have £37 billion less to spend on services than initially planned in future years. Yet the government didn't make too much of this yesterday. Could it be that Mr Brown remembers the moment in 2005 when he posed with Tony Blair to attack the Tories for proposing £35bn in "cuts"? Notice that Mr Tony is pointing a rather accusatory finger at his successor..."

Now, I suspect that had Darling been totally honest about these bits of the budget, he would have got away with it politically because of the huge debt and poor growth figures he had to announce, and the those projected for the next few years, albeit very optimistically.
I think that he wanted to be entirely honest with us, the economic situation simple demands it. But his next door neighbour had to interfere for purely his own political interests, and because he couldn't be honest about the state of the finances or a budget if he tried!

And if I was Darling tonight, I would be feeling very angry. Brown was a thorn in the side of his neighbour in Downing Street for 10 years, and now that one has moved out, and poor Darling has moved in, he is discovering just how difficult it can be living with the neighbour from hell.

Brown really over hyped this fiscal stimulus while Darling was trying desperately to get the figures to add up while running around after his boss trying to hose down expectations. Looks like there has been some briefing and counter briefing going on, just like the old days between Brown and Blair.
Mandelson and Campbell maybe back, but the old tribute band are sounding very off key these days.

And now, we have the makings of another 10p tax con fiasco. But a bunch of incompetents!

Ah good.

But wait a minute, I thought George Osborne's "outstanding" speech would have rocketed you to a 20 point lead by now?

Hmm.

"But wait a minute, I thought George Osborne's "outstanding" speech would have rocketed you to a 20 point lead by now?"

Hmmm, I thought that the record breaking debt levels incurred by this Labour government might have warranted a mention on Labourhome in the emergency budget articles or the threads?

Oh, I forgot, a Labour government spends it and leaves a Tory government to clear up the mess while the taxpayer pays for it!
If a Tory government had racked up that level of debt, they would have to pass around the smelling salts on this site.

Resident Leftie said:"The 45% rate will only occur after the electorate has had a chance to vote on it. I don't believe they would increase it if they say they won't."

Of course, it will be a bit late by then as they will have already spent the money!

Polls are irrelevant in the current febrile atmosphere. Ignore the good and bad.

The incumbent PM has the whiphand in a crisis. The NuLab will be voted out at next election and in the ensuing years the Great British Public will have time to pause and reflect on the decade of economic mismanagement that has put us back to 70's.

Nu/Old/Labour will be out of office for twenty years which is how far backwards we have gone under this idiotic and incompetent ship of fools.

"But wait a minute, I thought George Osborne's "outstanding" speech would have rocketed you to a 20 point lead by now?"

This poll opened at 6pm on Monday. The pattern with YouGov polls is that most responses are received in the first few hours. The majority of responses would therefore have been collected before the respondents had seen the bad press reception for the PBR. Indeed, it is likely that many will have responded on the basis of what they thought was in the PBR from the weekend's leaks.

We know that it generally takes time for polls to respond to significant events. This poll was taken far too early to tell us how people are reacting to the PBR. However, if press comment on the PBR continues to be negative the polls will respond. Equally when the VAT reduction kicks in next week and people start to realise that it has made little or no difference to prices, that will also produce a reaction in the polls.

I'm no fan of Gids, and don't think he is the right man for Chancellor, but Labour's leaked plan for 18.5% VAT after the next election is building up a consistent pattern of a party that desperately needs to be kicked out of office.

Whether Team Cameron will be up to the job is another question and hence the debates here, but clearly we need to call time on this terrible government.

Key polls will be after the Saturdays and Sundays have published their in-depth analysis of the PBR.

People will have time to read these in detail and be duly shocked. Our spinners need to be in there pointing out Brown's £235bn borrowing binge, run up before any of this and the huge debts our children and grand-children face as a consequence of Labour's profligacy.

Interestingly, BBC are rubbishing the VAT cut.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7748353.stm

from DT

Today's poll found that 60 per cent of the public support the Government's temporary cut in Vat and 72 per cent welcome the new higher-rate tax band.

the Conservative leader is said to have come out of the current crisis "badly" by 47 per cent of people.

The Governments 'excuse' for the 18.5% vat document - seems to be that Stephen Timms signed the wrong copy of the document, which was then published etc...

How much is Stephen Timms paid? how much is spent on staff for him? Is it acceptible for a minister to sign something with out reading it?

Surely this is a resigning matter.

Nick Robinson (of the bbc) says that he and Robert Peston were briefed on budget a number of days before it was finalised (doesn't specifically say by whom).

But whowever it was, surely this is a resigning matter too.

I wouldn't read too much into the polls at the moment, either way. The current economic events are so profound that it will take some time to settle and for the real picture to emerge.

The only observation that I would make is that people want to know how Government is going to lead us out of this situation. The typical yah-boo politics is not going to go down at all well.

Budgets have a very peculiar habit of being hailed when they are announced, and damned when the dust settles, and vice versa. It's too early to tell with this one.

Posted by: ChrisD | November 26, 2008 at 01:11

I must commend ChrisD on a well researched and well written post, although as you might expect, I disagree with his conclusions.

I believe the most relevant polls will be in JANUARY/FEBRUARY!

After Christmas once the dust has settled,reality will bite,the pensioners will have had their one off payment and increased pension,the VAT reduction will have had chance to be fully analysed and the post Christmas depression will have set in.People will tend to look for credit as they often do at time of year and it'll be interesting to see if it is easier,or harder,to find.
If in January/February we have a lead of 5-6% or more in my opinion election is won - if we are behind or level - there will need to be a long long hard look at personalities and policies!

Some polls are up, some are down - so what?

This was Labour's ploy to try to get into the lead. After predictions of successful handouts for all and big rises in poll shares, we've got "oh well, where's the big Tory rise?"

Labour have completely failed in using one of the few opportunities they had to boost their position, and/or people haven't fully digested the PBR yet. To see the Opposition not improve their position can hardly be called a victory when this was Labour's move!

I took part in the poll which closed on Monday before the PBR statement. They didn't like that result so cobbled up a later one. Kellner is repaying the "gift" made to his Mrs, with The EU gravy spoon! Typical Campbell/Mandleson. YouGov know the allegiance of their panellists and manipulate for their clients' requirement. Even then unable to drive below 40% for The Tories. If they are happy to fix postal votes then, ergo.............

M Dowding, I seriously think you are wrong there.
There are arguments about whether internet, the weighting, or the panel are a good or bad thing,
but YouGov has predicted the high Labour figures in mid 2007 and now, and the high Tory figures in 2008.
No evidence there's any bias atall.

Two thirds of voters, including more than a third of Conservatives, reckon

"the Conservatives are spending too much time blaming the Government for getting us into the present mess and ...

not enough time saying how they would get us out of it".

typical Nu_Con i.e. the man with plan has no plan -

You are talking complete rubbish M Dowding.

Posted by: West Lopdon Tory | November 26, 2008 at 11:19

YouGov became dependant on a good client base from ensuring accurate polling last year. I began to lose my antipathy toward Kellner at that time. However once Campbell and Mandy returned, Kellner fell once more under their spell. I took part in the original poll, why did it suddenly change? Don't tell me Lady Kellner's very lucrative position on The Labour gravy train is irrelevant. With this duplicitous bunch everything is twisted. I wouldn't trust them to agree on today being Wednesday!

I see from YouGov's website that the response produced a universe about 18% below their 'normal' average level and that polling was from 24-26 November.
Since I read the results at 10pm on the 25th they are lying to cover up the shoddy nature of the job.

The polls look good. But please may we know about the missing 10%?
If these are "Don't know", that is OK. But they could be for BNP - perish the thought.

The YouGov detailed poll figures are interesting.

The Tories still have a 50% advantage in London and the South East, where much of the economic misery is concentrated this time, compared to 29% in London and 26% in the SE for Labour.

Labour is ahead in the North but women are 42% for Conservatives and 33% for Labour - they don't like Brown, do they? Brown has women problems.

The Tories are also 10 points ahead amongst the ABC1s.

Betty - I would have said that THIS poll looked b****y awful myself with Labour the biggest party - inless that's what you want ! ?

The others are (roughly) 5% nationalists and Ulster parties. About 2% for the Greens and 1% each for BNP and UKIP (I suspect BNP isd understated because people will keep that close to their chest) Don't knows are always excluded from these headline figures as are refusers .

If Simon Hughes had become Lib Dem leader, they would be streets ahead by now .
The straight choice.

Admittedly, my gut reaction when I saw this poll result on Teletext at breakfast was one of weary and confused indignation: "What?!"

Two questions then occured to me. Hasn't the disastrous PBR sunk in yet? And also, Why hasn't YouGov delivered their Daily Telegraph poll on the last Thursday of the month like they usually do, which would have given a much more accurate picture?

"they don't like Brown, do they? Brown has women problems."

That, if some of the posters on Mr Fawkes's blog are to be believed, is putting it mildly!

I take it, Natalie, your post is ironic on both counts.

The LibDems are going to be looking at their leadership again if they carry on like this.

A few Gallup polls to remember if Labour do advance any further;

Jan 1978 - neck and neck
May 1978 - neck and neck
Jun 1978 - neck and neck
Aug 1978 - Labour 4% lead
Oct 1978 - Labour 5.5% lead
Nov 1978 - Labour 5% lead
May 1979 - Conservatives back in power with a majority of 43

As history tells us, the battle with Labour is by no means over.

The Tories had a lead of 16-20% in May 1977 and swept the County Council elections, including most of the old Met counties.
By November, the polls were showing about 45% each, as the economy picked up somewhat.
We could have lost if Jim Callaghan had called it in 1978, but he feared being beaten in marginal seats in the Midlands, and at best no improvement from 1974 stalemate.

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