Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Could Theresa May blow this general election?

Until recently, the prospect of Theresa May flopping in this general election would have been absurd – but today’s YouGov poll shows her lead cut to just five points, less than a quarter of its peak. Converted into seats, that would mean a majority of just two MPs, down from the 17-strong majority achieved by David Cameron against Ed Miliband. At a time when the extraordinary is happening all the time, it is impossible to dismiss this opinion poll.

The public like her style, but her shambolic U-turn over the so-called ‘dementia tax’ has given everyone cause to doubt whether she is as ‘strong and stable’ as she says she is. In fact, she can look indecisive and a bit dozy. She repeatedly promised us that she would not hold a general election, but then did. She made National Insurance increases the cornerstone of her first Budget, only to abandon the idea days later when she worked out that it violated her manifesto pledge. And she made the abolition of the cap on care home fees the single most significant announcement of her manifesto launch, then abandoned that as well when working out that critics would lampoon it as a ‘dementia tax’. The Andrew Neil interview – and the BBC News at Ten on Monday night – showed the way that her campaign was going. Politics was suspended by what happened at 10:33pm that night but, as Philip Collins says in the Times today, people have not forgotten about the debacle.

In this ridiculously personalised campaign – she always asks us to vote for ‘me and my team’, rather than her party – the personal credibility of the leader matters more than ever. And if the leader is in the habit of accidentally firing tornadoes at her own credibility, then this matters too.

Not since Labour’s 1983 ‘Suicide note’ has a manifesto launch done so much to cheer the other side.

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