Tories more trusted on NHS than Labour

David Boothroyd

If respondents thought the NHS would be equally safe under Labour or the Conservatives, they would also have said no - so it is not necessarily a big advantage for the Conservatives. And 39% is substantially higher than Labour's opinion poll standing, so highlighting this issue is not going to do Labour any harm.

hysteria

This wil simply confirm them in their current path - to pledge real term increases in expenditure year on year.

TrevorsDen

Mr Boothroyd is desperate and is peddling his line on any blog he can get his hands on but the poll facts are plain ---- 47% are at least as happy with Tories as labour on the NHS.

This is no basis on which to base a strategy.

As for tory policy - just lets leave it as 'steady as she goes'.
The NHS is a bottomless money pit - it will be very difficult to manage even with ring fenced spending.

Verity

Is Dave going to promise the British a free referendum on the future of our 2,000 year old country regardless of which way the Irish vote on the Lisbon "treaty"?

Until he gives that commitment he can blow his "policies" out his arse.

Andrew Cadman

Have faith. I personally think the Tories are playing a long game:

(1) it will take a lot of determination to get their education reforms through, and the Tories will want to devote much of their energy towards this in their first term. Try to do too much in the first term on two fronts and he risks getting bogged down as soon as the flak really starts to fly.

(2) I think Cameron is looking to create a cultural change in how the public view the provision of public services and the Tories fitness to deliver it before embarking on health service reform. If the education reforms look like being a success, he can embark on the much more difficult job of health reform with enhanced trust from the electorate in a second term. Health is much more complex and emotional area than education, and no matter what you do the opposition can always point to some failure that has cost lives of increased suffering. He needs to win over the electorate first and devote the governments energies to one thing at a time as far as the public services go.

strapworld

David Boothroyd has a very valid point. The company that carried out this survey is not well liked by Political Betting!!!

Trevors Den (still wearing his rose tinted spectacles -when it comes to tory policies) suggests that there is nothing one can do to stop money pouring into the over staffed- quango ridden- NHS. That is quite simply an absolutely ridiculous stance.

If Trevors Den is an example of conservative party thinking, then bankruptcy is facing this country.

daisy

Andrew Cadman, you've cheered me up! I DO hope that you are right. But the Conservatives, if and when they get in, must hit the ground running.

crockhamtown

Fleet Street Blues blog writes:

"Guido Fawkes - who knows a thing or two about success on the internet - sensibly points out that over the course of a three days 11,902 people tweeted #welovethenhs 22,642 times."

This implies that most people tweeted twice.

If 11,902 is divided by our 650 constituencies, this is an average of 18 people from each who tweeted.

Reg

Strapworld

...Used not to be liked by posters on Political Betting.
IIRC Comres now uses polling methodology akin to ICM, so we dont see the differences we used to see when Comres tampered with their methodology.

I fully expect Comres to be in line with other pollsters.

Geoffrey

Is there anything at all that the Government is trusted on?

John B Sheffield

I really expected the polls this weekend to show a drop for the Tories after the Hannan/NHS debate. David Cameron though in the last week quickly stood firm with his commitment to the NHS.

Those few Tories who still seem to want to scrap the NHS for a Private Health Scheme would drag the Party to spending many years on the opposition benches as we would never be trusted for years to come by the UK electorate.

Verity

Any party in power is always going to be perceived as "not doing enough" for the NHS. That the polls show a higher percentage of people favouring the Tories over this issue is no surprise.

pat mcgroin

crockhamtown
it is small fry compared to the 2.5 million people watching dan hannan tear gordon a new a-hole and the tens of thousands petioning the PM to resign.

Marcus Cotswell

The problem with you scribblers is that you always want some policy meat to scribble about. Does it occur to you that one of the reasons the tories are mkore trusted on health is precisely because it is one of their 'weakest' (by which you mean least fully developed) policy areas? To put it another way, have you ever been involved in a serious election campaign?