Have the opinion polls ever looked more discouraging, overall, for the Tories during this government? Not that I can remember, although I’m happy to be corrected. Not only does YouGov’s poll for the Sunday Times (£) have Labour ahead by nine points, but there are also some pretty dismal supplementary findings. For YouGov, both David Cameron and the coalition score their lowest approval ratings since the start of this Parliament. For ComRes in the Independent on Sunday, 72 per cent of respondents reckon the government is ‘out of touch with ordinary voters’; 81 per cent say the government created ‘unnecessary panic’ over fuel; and so on. It’s probably no surprise that Tory MPs are now telling the Indy that ‘It is a friggin’ shambles’.
But Ed Miliband, for all his bravado in the Observer today, shouldn’t get too excited just yet. There’s the usual caveat to be applied to these polls, after all: that they’re being conducted years out from a general election. And then there’s a related caveat too: that British politics is especially volatile at the moment. Indeed, Labour have actually had 10 and 11 point leads with YouGov in this Parliament (last March) — and no one really regarded Miliband as our Prime-Minister-in-waiting back then. The Tories in government are confident that, against this Opposition, they can bounce back sharpish. Many are citing Tony Blair’s recovery after he slumped in the polls during the fuel protests of 2000.
Besides, the public appear similarly mistrustful of both the Tories and Labour at the moment. In the YouGov poll, 68 per cent of people believe that Conservative donors have a ‘fair amount’ or a ‘lot’ of influence over party policy; the equivalent figure for Labour is 69 per cent. 24 per cent trust David Cameron to be open about his relationships with donors; for Miliband it’s 25 per cent. Which brings us to the most eyecatching, and perhaps most telling, finding of all: 68 per cent of folk think that British politics is either ‘fairly’ or ‘very’ corrupt.
One final point: the proportion of people telling YouGov that they will vote ‘Other’ at the next election is at its highest level (17 per cent) for all of this Parliament. We shouldn’t read too much into one figure, particularly as fourth and fifth parties have waned, as well as waxed, in recent years. But against the current political backdrop, that number might be worth keeping an eye on.
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