A tale of two polls

TrevorH

Any poll taken two minutes after a labour budget is useless. How many people realised that far from hitting 'gas guzzlers' the chancellors tax hike would affect their car proportionally more than the owner of a Rolls Phantom? And are you seriously suggesting that the respondents to this poll had the governments debt projections put in front of them before they gave Brown/Darling their seal of approval? maybe if you did your job properly - instead of the regular anti Cameron snide postings - then the public would 'get' the truth. How many of the middle class respondents realised that an unnanounced NI hike would cost them 500£ a tear (on top of council tax increases that they had probably forgotten about (after all labour rely on us having the attention span of a goldfish)? How many low paid working class respondents realised that their income taxx was going up?

CS

I wouldn't pay much attention to members of ConservativeHome. 90% of them believe that history began in 1979 and that there were no general elections in 2001 and 2005.

Simon

The poll in The Times was unweighted, and had a small sample. Populus always favour Labour. Conservative Home surveys are meaningless. There only purpose being to boost Tim Montgomery's ego. Anyone who thinks victory will be made easier by promising radical tax cuts when voters are feeling uneasy about the economy urgetly needs medical help. Keep taking the tablets

George

I think it should be tortoises. You do not let a biased state-funded broadcaster savage you for months before an election by releasing too much detail on policy. As Melanie Phillips has noted in the Mail a while back, Brown has support but much of it is soft. He's certainly no Blair.

On the same subject, the Lansley fellow had no business being so rash by saying he'd maintain NHS spending for so many years. What a hostage to fortune that was.

Henry Rogers

I think a number of recent Labour budgets have received initial acceptance from the public only for opinions to change after the full implications sink in. It will be interesting to see what happens this time.

Nicholas

That's the "headline finding" you have selected Peter. The other headlines are:

Members want stronger attacks on Labour and a powerful account of the extent to which Britain has become broken during the Blair-Brown years. These are the top two wishes of the grassroots.

There is a strong belief in the electoral potency of David Cameron. 85% want him front-and-centre in future campaigns.

82% support the Tory leader's recent decision to launch a campaign against the political establishment. Nick Clegg is jumping on to this issue today with a call to cut the number of MPs by 150.

Tory members aren't in a hurry for a change of direction, however. 84% agree that we should focus on May's elections and then make next step decisions.

The biggest problem is still the Labour bias in the media, amongst the young, ethnic minorities and the civil service, who seem to have no problem reconciling their opposition to "the war" with their continuing support for Labour or, rather, animadversion to the Tories. The "debate" on tax is superficial, because it does not focus on the details of how tax is spent and the monumental waste involved. It has been brought low to soundbites where cutting tax is "nasty" and spending it is good for all those nice, cuddly, warm, fluffy institutions lefties love. Skoolz'n'ospitalz. Never mind that so many schools are rubbish and so may hospitals are death traps. Labour have cunningly managed to obviate truth from the "debate" - the Tories need to equally cunningly reintroduce it.

CS

The steadfast refusal to learn any lessons from history (or at least the last 10 years of it). You only have to look at the inheritance tax affair to see that Earth shattering policy announcements by the Tories will be a nine day wonder. Then Labour will quietly adopt those policies and the electorate will soon forget or cease to care who had the idea first. Too many commentators (especially on Coffee House) are still stuck in the mindset of the 70s and 80s. Nail your colours to the mast and it'll force your opponents to do the same and hey presto - clear blue water. It doesn't happen like that any more. The current government acts wholly on pragmatism, not principle. It will shift from right to left with equal ease in order to swallow up whatever the centre ground happens to be on any particular day. The only policies which are safe from this form of theft are those which are so extreme as to make any party espousing them unelectable.

David

Hang on, a poll suggests that the public are sympathetic to the Brown line on the economy, and your remedy is to go miles in the opposite direction?

TrevorH

"Hang on, a poll suggests that the public are sympathetic to the Brown line on the economy, and your remedy is to go miles in the opposite direction? " David you should all realise by now that just because someone runs a flashy looking blog does not stop you having a brain the size of a weasels wedding tackle.

TGF UKIP

I have been posting for some while that this Budget would provide yet another opportunity for the Tories to break free of their disastrous and unconvincing Blue Labour strategy. The release was to be provided by the part of the Budget well covered on this blog but entirely missing in general Press coverage and that is the hugely escalating debt - 574 bn 2006-07 to 809 bn 2011-12. Debt is a present and uncomfortably growing issue for many voters and being human people always love to have someone else to blame, hence the failure of Dave and Boy George to even mention, let alone attach, the label of "Gordon Brown's British Mountain of Debt" is downright puzzling. By focussing on this, they could very credibly announce the sensible thing to do would be to review economic policy and endeavour to get themselves back to safer ground. A number of the posts above are from Dave's most avid Coffee House cheerleaders and they contain a great deal of wishful thinking. Your man is now in very dangerous waters. After being unable to get real political traction after five months of a succession of Government blunders, if Dave & Boy George cannot use this appalling Budget to make real polling headway it won't just be the likes of me who'll be calling time on them.

Tiberius

That Times poll does seem to reinforce the impression of an electorate largely lobotomized by 11 years of New Labour indoctrination. To pose Marx's question in a scenario he couldn't have forseen, "What is to be done?"

TGF UKIP

Yes, indeed, Tiberius, "What is to be done?" I await your answer with great interest perhaps combined with your take on Dave's speech outlined on Peter's post "A Wider Philosophy" earlier this after noon.