There are two ways of looking at today’s YouGov poll, the first carried out since the announcement of the government’s rescue plan for the banks. The first is to see it as evidence of how the financial crisis is reviving Gordon Brown’s premiership. Labour are up three point to 33 percent—their highest rating with YouGov since February, 59 percent support the government’s rescue plan and Brown and Darling are 33-27 ahead of Cameron and Osborne on the question of who voters trust to best handle this crisis.
The other, and to my mind more accurate, way of looking at it is of proof of how much trouble Labour is still in. If after days of positive press coverage, with the whole rally round the flag effect of a crisis and with the opposition largely silent the best that Labour can do is to close the gap to ten points that is hardly encouraging for them. The poll shows that only 29 percent of voters think Brown is handling the crisis well and the Tories have a comfortable 34-27 lead on who voters trust more to raise their family’s standard of living.
Economic pessimism is unsurprisingly the order of the day. 52 percent say that the country’s economy is in very bad shape and 51 percent expect the country to go into recession over the next 12 months. The public overwhelmingly, 62 to 21, favour spending cuts rather than tax rises if steps have to be taken to reduce the budget deficit. This is further evidence that ‘Labour investment’ versus ‘Tory cuts’ won’t work as an electoral strategy this time round.
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