Poll shows Cameron on course for a 78 seat majority

The Welsh Jacobite

"Alternative leader", please!!

Peter Buss

Well put Fraser. I am actually relieved with the post Conference Polls - the Conference was virtually swept off the news agenda. This is heartening poll news.

Michael Riley

I thought the election was two years away. Do not count your chickens. The Tories have a mountain to climb.

Jon in Enfield

Well obviously "Mandy will one day do for Brown". He has joined the government precisely because you have to get behind someone if you want to stab them in the back.

Slim Jim

It will be interesting to see what happens post-Glenrothes. If Labour lose, and the economy continues down the pan, what will happen then? The corpse is still twitching, and it appears the devil-spawn that begat the perfidious pile of ordure that is New Labour is holding the electrodes...you're still a dead man walking Brown.

Slim Jim

Michael, it's Brown who has a mountain to climb. He dug the hole deep, and he's still digging. Mandelson FFS! How desperate is he?

Lord Rumba of Rio

Really, Fraser, you do me an injustice. I am, of course, utterly loyal to Gordon, who as we all know is the right Helmsman to steer the SS Great Britain through the turbulent waters ahead. Naturally I am utterly devoid of personal ambition and couldn't possibly comment on your insinuations.

PS but, let's put it like this, *I might be a risk worth taking*

PPS "Piranha"? I don't do nibbles...

Pat

Mandelson is a Trojan Horse. His mission is to remove Brown from within Government. In doing so he will minimise the Tory majority at the next election and lead the Labour Party through a one-term Opposition.

This is Blairs gift to the Labour Party and the ultimate 'don't get mad get even' act against the man who not only planned and lead the coup against him but who has, in a year as PM, undone everything in a spectacular display of cowardice and self administered mediocracy.

David

"The Tories have a mountain to climb."

No, actually. They have a mountain peak to defend. And nobody is counting any chickens yet, so sorry to disappoint you.

There's also a YouGov in the Telegraph tomorrow that puts the Tories on a 14pts lead after the 12pts of ICM the other day. Translates to majority of 114, which sounds about right since this marginals poll doesn't take into account Labour seats lost to the SNP etc.

Joe Mooney

He only appointed old Mandy as a sop to the Blair people.

He also knows that Mandy cannot challenge him as for the leadership as he is not an MP.

Tiberius

Excellent polling results indeed but you're right, Michael R - a swing of 40 seats either way is quite possible come election day.

Meanwhile it should be really entertaining to watch Brown's Faustian pact in action: Mandy, the ermine-clad Goat.

Mark

The margin will increase in polls taken after Mandelson's return.
I can only assume that the calculation is to dump on the core Labour vote and hope that Mandy will help Gordon get votes in the middle ground.
Glenrothes is lost.

Austin Barry

What pressures were applied to Brown to bring back Mandy, and by whom and to what end? Something very odd is happening here.

TGF UKIP

A very interesting poll, Fraser, but what I would really like to know is if there is the same dramatic difference in this poll's results, as in overall national polls, between the North West marginals and the South East marginals outside London.

One thing I did find fascinating was the variation in the answers to the tax cut and spending cut question - male 6% balance in favour, female 18%! Likewise the 18-24 and 25-34 age groups being 29% and 22% respectively in favour of tax cuts - amazing - what is Dave messing abour for! The anomaly, however, being a 2% reversal for AB voters which I assumed to be due to the probable inclusion now in this socio economic group of so many public sector "professionals."

So far as Mandy's return goes, I would simply make the point that with Gordon newly reinvigorated, Campbell in and out of No 10 and Mandy back in town, a return of the bare knuckle pre 97 politics looks right on the cards. A sort of politics which Dave and his effete mob seem to have neither the appetite nor aptitude for.

Nicholas

SS Great Britain eh? I guess that is about the right view of the country by the national socialists, the neo fascists, New Labour.

It won't be the economy that does for Brown. The depth of feeling about his nanny state runs deep and the pseudo-Maoist plans of his barmy cabinet will just entrench the desire amongst the young and free to obliterate New Labour for all time. Polls will not pick this up.

Dirty Euro

79 seats is not as much as the Blair landslide.
My advice would bring in Trimble for intertantional development, Rifkind for Secretery for justice, Ancram as a deputy chariman, Clarke in some capacity. This would help the tories on the experience issue. And would moderste some of the more right wing types. :

Frank P

Austin Barry

Odd indeed. Anybody looked at the Labour Party balance sheet lately? There are some heavy duty markers being called in and some heavy duty creditors asking!

Lord Levy has been very quiet just lately, hasn't he? Now that the holidays are over ...

This can all hardly become more bizarre, but it can certainly become more febrile - apoplectic even - as old scores get settled in the melee as power drains away on both sides of the Atlantic.

Verity

TGI UKIP - As almost always, I think you are astute.

I have consistently noted that Dave will not win the next election. He doesn't disagree with them enough. He's not angry enough.

If the Tories don't hack Dave off and put in a right winger, the Tories will lose this election and will join the communists in the EUSSR and forget English Common Law. The Commonwealth will have it, but we will sacrifice it in at the altar of catering to weakness. The lefty Trojan Horse.

Fraser Nelson

Tiberius, I agree - we're still uncomfortably close to "hung parliament" territory because Cameron needs an 8 point lead to get a simple majority.

TGF, there's an interesting theory in the marketing world that women are far more careful with money. That's why there's adverts now showing women sorting out loans, etc, for their hapless men. And as for bare knuckle, I agree - but think the fight will take place inside No10.

Roger Davies

This vile pair, Mandy and Camby, are probably the best of a bad lot, just look at that herd of donkey's that calls itself Labour Back-benchers, a more stupid bunch of no-hopers, who must be polishing their lack luster CVs, would be hard to find. I doubt that many of them would make it to under Manager of a rural Welsh COOP.

Marian C

Austin Barry - "What pressures were applied to Brown to bring back Mandy, and by whom and to what end? Something very odd is happening here"

I agree with you, something very odd is happening. Mandy has upset a lot of people in Europe. It did make me wonder if some sort of deal has been struck between Sarkozy and Brown; and that Brown's part of it was to recall Mandy

Max Kaye

Maybe Mandy just missed his encounters with the clunking fist.

BTW, wasn't Mandy the originator of the phrase "psychologically flawed"?

Wight Tory

But the good news for Brown in that only 36 percent think he should step down and 58 percent think he should carry on. No real alternate leader emerges, which I always attribute to a lack of name recognition.

I don't think people have the will to see this rumble on and on and on and on and on.....They, like us all want him/them to get on with it. I agree with defending the mountain top comment earlier, we need to keep our powder dry and keep picking at the scab that is the Labour party's wound. Do it long enough and often enough, then chuck in a bit of their own rotton handiwork, the wound will then go gangreen, amputation then will be the only remedy then.

strapworld

Did anyone see boy george on marr's programme, this morning?

Why the hell did he allow himself to be on the same couch as Vince Cable? The people have this view that Cable is the answer to out economic problems and he looked quite the master whilst boy george sat there, hands clasped on his knees!! It looked terrible.

I agree (surprise surprise) a little with TGI ukip. The Conservatives have to realise that they need big hitters on their front bench now, as politics is going to get dirty!

David Davies, Ken Clarke, John Redwood, Michael Howard are big time hitters and they have got to be given front line jobs. Not a panic measure , more a sensible approach to what will be a torrid time!

I would also ask Richard Littlejohn to be the Tories Alistair Campbell!!!! You need people that can speak how ordinary voters speak and think. Littlejohn hits the button most weeks.

Jon

If you can turn up in this country with children, qualify for benefits after four weeks of work, and then get 60% of average earnings, the definition of poverty, no wonder they come. Nobody has answered Milton Freidmans question, how can you have a welfare state and unlimited immigration?

TGF UKIP

Fraser, my guess is you are going to be disappointed if you think the "bare knuckles" are going to stay in No 10. I would be very surprised if the large clutch of N. West marginals didn't show a very much closer picture than a 15% Tory lead.

If the Tories were at all a decent opposition Gordon should be dead and buried by now, instead of which he and, by inference, Blair, Mandelson and Campbell think that there is everything to play for and the Tories can be taken and given the softness and geographical patchiness of the Tory lead I think they're dead right.

Dave and Cos relative docility and passivity as an opposition is I think going to invite Gordon and the gang to really get stuck into them as they failed to do to Gordon.

BTW, could you direct us to somewhere we can see the current pollsters definitions of AB, C1, C2 etc?

J H Holloway

You lot should look back at Labour's 'intended' versus 'actual' voting patterns. Labour is always overestimated and Conservative underestimated by the average poll.
Have a look at the opinion polls just before May 1997.