YouGov's latest poll shows biggest Tory lead since early January

Peter From Maidstone

Sorry, but why should we trust anything that YouGov produces? And more than that, why are YOU asking us to without any sort of critical analysis of the figures and how the underlying raw data compares to any other week.

Surely your journalistic instinct must kick in at some point so that you do more than just tell us what you are being told by others with their own agendas?

logdon

What was it about the prospect of execution on the 'morrow concentrating the mind?

I think this applies also to execution of a nation and those voters out there are realising that five more years of the despised Brown would just about do it.

Charles

For me what is interesting is that Labour has fewer and fewer potential game changers.

They have played the "Ashcroft card", they have had the budget, they have attacked the Tories for being too posh and Osborne for being clueless.

None of this seems to have stuck - it made a limited amount of progress but then the Tories came out with a policy-driven announcement (NI cut) and effortlessly sets the agenda for several days.

Does it just get worse for Labour from here on...or am I missing something?

Irene

It does seem odd that YouGov are now getting a bit near the mark regarding the labour share, it seems to have started on thursday and also the Telegraph did a piece about the YouGov "weighting" and now we have a 10% lead - I thought Kellner looked a bit grumpy on Sky earlier - Angus Reid/Sunday Express show an 11% lead tonight.

North Bury

Are Labour really paying for a poster campaign depicting Cameron as the most popular copper of the last 25 years?

Richard

What a difference a week makes....Harold Wilson was right....a week is a long time in politics.

What has changed...nothing really!
The swing is no more than the ebb and flow of the froth in the news media.
When the game starts for real, the people focus on the issues that diectly effect them... then the national mood will expose the reality of where the nations heart lies.
As the day of reckoning nears the floating voters will deminish......the opinion polls will settle to what they have always been in truth.....a hung parliament with no majority. Gordon Brown will be holding the keys to No 10, the Liberals backing him and Cameron mortally wounded while Brown is able to reap the reward of improving performance figures.

Derek

Peter from Maidstone

Well, the YouGov figures are corroborated at http://www2.politicalbetting.com/by the Angus Reid poll for the Sunday Express(38%/27%) and apparently Ladbrokes are offering 11/10 that the Labour share will be less than 30%.

TomTom

Complain about YouGov and Peter Kellner finds a new adjustment !

Snowman

hurrah, that really made my day. Will the next poll make my tomorrow, and the day after, and...

Snowman

James, an idea of sort. Instead of following the polls that jump all around the place and are more likely than not to be wrong on the day, why don’t you do a piece on what you reckon the outcome will be, and invite the intellectually sharp minds following you to contribute their own guesses in a twitter-like fashion, i.e. not more than say 20 sentences. After May 6th you’ll pick a winner, and dispatch a bottle of champagne.

Nicholas

"David Miliband said Mr Cameron would take Britain back to the "meaner and more brutal" Britain of the Thatcherite 1980s and he wanted to re-run the decade. "It was a very different Britain. It was a meaner more brutal Britain," he said."

That's not how I remember it at all. Socialist revisionism at work again. Of course now we are all equality and fairness and lovely pink fluffy bunnies, child spies, grandmothers being tagged for selling goldfish, schoolchildren terrorising teachers, the old dying of disease in filthy hospitals, people being scared to speak their minds and 4,000 other new laws to criminalise and control us.

Yes, Millipede, it was a very different Britain, before you and your commie friends started your work.

Yes, bring back the Eighties, a time before Blair and Brown besmirched our green and pleasant land with their deliberate mass immigration plan and all their other "progress". Bastards.

ajs

Those who wish to wager on the outcome are welcome to their frivolities. But the outcome is far more important. If the past history of the Labour Party is any guide, future bettors (?betters) will be taxed out of their winnings and imprisoned for debts.

Dirty Euro

You tories desire an unchristian society that fights for inequality fights for injustice fights for poverty.
Why do you fight for inequality, why do you fight for greed against social justice?

Brian the Snail

Follow the bookmakers odds, where real money is on the result. And in the real world everybody knows Labour are not just well done toast but carbon. The public loathes Brown, Balls, Mandlebaum and Baldermort beyond words.

Consider the pathetic efforts today to "ridicule" Cameron by comparing him to the Gene Hunt character from Life on Mars. Out of touch or what?

Anybody other than a Labour half wit spod with head well up PC backside would know Gene Hunt is pure legend.

"Nervous as a virgin in a brothel"

"Fingers in more pie than a leper on a cookery course"

What planet are they on then??

Tankus

Maybe its the Blair effect ...?

Sort of neutralizes gordon's compulsive Aaassssccroffftttt tourette's (the only answer in town) to any utterly unrelated question that he cant think quick enough to answer .

Somewhat shady in appearance opaque income from numerous off sea sources , probably been a non dom in tax status since hitting the global trough,and money filtered through multiple companies , Onshore ,offshore ? who knows ....? Hes not telling ..!

And now actively engaged in British politics ..... or so gordon thinks , but more likely positioning himself for future sources of income ..Just like his blue peter rock tour in the states just before he stepped up to global saviour and future proto pope ! ...

Every time Ashcroft is mentioned , Blair should be brought up in the same breath ..

There is no difference !

Why does this man have a staff of 130 people , and what are they doing ? Surely the cost of these poeple alone should disbar him from being politically active, due to cost limits on electoral spend, visibility and capping of political income ?

Very smelly

And while I'm at it ...postal votes should be banned for this election , This country desperately needs an honest vote this time !

2trueblue

Mr Baroness Ashton must have had a crash course in weighting? Who will believe his polls in future? The man is so blinded by his prejudice that he fails to see he has discredited his company.
The 2 Millies do look odd when paired together on the TV. Not a wise move to let them out together as they do look ridiculous. Anyway what sould they know about the 1980's? Britain was the sick man of Europe and it took the Tories a long time to put us back on the map.My hesband was in shipping and during the 80's Britain gained credibility worldwide. Lets hope that it can be rescued form Liebore, who have destroyed anything good.

Snowman

Dirty Euro:

Sober first, then type will you. And that’s an advice from someone a couple of miles to the right of the Tories

Alex

Getting desperate 'Richard'. I guess your job depends on this unlikely outcome, eh?

JONNY

Take a look at Kellner's current piece in The NS.
Not exactly objective. Or unbiased I would suggest.

General Zod

Richard has clerly lost hope, posting now only of Brown clinging on in a hung Parliament, rather than winning the election.

Dirty Euro, on the other hand, has lost the last marble that had been rattling around inside his skull.

There is at least a month to go, so there will no doubt be some worrying moments for the Tories before the election, but Labour have nothing but despair to embrace.

Michael

The opinion polls are still showing pretty much the same thing - the public want Labour out and don't want the Conservatives either, resulting in a parliament where none of the parties have enough MPs to get their legislation through. Seems the best option so far. The nightmare scenario that it may produce instead is a Labour-Liberal majority government. At which point either HM would throw them all out or everyone else would walk out.

Nicholas

Dirty Euro: "You tories desire an unchristian society that fights for inequality fights for injustice fights for poverty.
Why do you fight for inequality, why do you fight for greed against social justice?"

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! We eat babies too!

We fight for freedom DE, freedom from the state and obnoxious lefties like you!

Fergus Pickering

The Eighties were my favourite decade. Scargill a la kanterne, the Falklands war a winner, Mrs Thatcher respected and feared over the Channel and my two daughters born. What's not to like? It's true I lost my job at the begining of all that, but into each life some rain must fall. I' still here and not on my uppers YET. The Seventies, now, that was really rough. Britain an international joke. Rubbish heaped in the streets. My train home at weekends rarely running. And those dreadful haircuts!

I fear we are a joke again. But (perhaps) not for much longer. I think Cameron is much less of a wimp than a lot of you here seem to. Time will tell, if he wins, and I think he is going to win.

echo34

The Miliband Brothers = the Jedward of British politics.

Paul B

I am with Nicholas, I remember the 80s very differently. I remember it as a time people were liberated,were able to enjoy the fruits of their hard earned. When the Nation, strolled out with a confident step. When the Armed Forces were properly supported in their endeavours and brought great pride to us all. When terrorists where hunted and were left in no doubt what the outcome would be should they take over Embassies. When we equal before the rule of law and there was true equality. The equality and freedom that hard work brings and the sense of pride for providing for yourself and family. Not the equality handed down by well meaning but naive statute. Pride that we had elected a sassy female PM, who possessed balls of steel, but had a pragmatic and caring nature, that those too stupid could not and cannot still recognise.

Michael Booth

To counter Labour claims that Cameron wants to take us back to the 80s, why not make the point that Brown has already taken us back to the 70s? Labour isn't working and all that jazz? For goodness sake they have provided so much material to focus on. Let's have some hard hitting body blows asap

immcintyre

Poll leads for the Tories are pointless when stupid and offensive comments are forthcoming from senior Shadow Cabinet people like Chris Grayling.

Peter From Maidstone

immcintyre, how are Grayling's comments offensive? I am entirely in favour of businesses being allowed to discriminate on whatever basis they wish, apart from in monopoly situations.

I wanted some printing done, and the business, which was run by Jehovah's Witnesses, had a policy of not printing material for other religious groups. I respected that policy. It was discriminatory - but so what - it was their business choice.

If I ran a B&B I would refuse to allow a homosexual couple to share a room. A great many people would agree. There are plenty of B&B's. It is a choice any business should be able to make.

Dan

"Nothing has changed really". Richard.

Er....there has been a significant move away Labour.

As for your other wildly optimistic (from a Labour perspective) scenario, it seems that you're more delusional then Brown!

Chuck Unsworth

Why are some B&Bs, some hotels, allowed to discriminate against smokers, dog owners, cat owners or even parents?

I do business with who the hell I feel like. If you walk into my offices wearing a tie that I find offensive or, worse, wearing no tie at all, I'm sorry but we're not working together - and I really don't have to give you any reason for my decision at all.

echo34

There's always www.guyzhotel.com who will accommodate you.

Oh look , no straights or females.
Discriminatory?

Man With a Very Hot Bladder

I don't trust YouGov at all.

Nicholas

The problem with New Labour's supposedly anti-discriminatory thought crimes are that all those discriminated against are equal but some are more equal than others. The same selective prejudice is applied to the discriminating groups.

Equality and fairness is all well and good when applied . er . equally and fairly. But when it is itself promoted as thinly disguised prejudice and bigotry from a specific ideological position (the bleeding left) it is counter productive, just stirring up more resentment and hatred.

Tankus

So no one thinks that the return of Blair to the scene of the crime has had any adverse political impact. ?

A permatan reminder of political prostetutuin at its worse , and just wait until his trollope puts her oar in

anne allan

In the eighties, adults were not afraid of their children. Nowadays, children are recruited as agent provocateurs (how and where are they recruited?) and are encouraged to bully their parents about whatever is the latest government health or social fad. How long before they'll be reporting their parents to teachers or the police?
And just try reprimanding them; they know exactly how to turn the tables.
This particular abomination was a feature of Nazi Germany, Stalin's Russia and Maoist China.
This factor alone, makes it imperative for Labour to be thrown out; another five years and it will be too late.

Marcher Baron

@Dirty Euro "You tories desire an unchristian society"

That really takes the biscuit, DE! If anybody has worked tirelessly for a unChristian society, it's been Labour over the last 13 years!