Yet another poll to report on today; one which more or less falls in line with the two released yesterday. The Ipsos MORI poll in the Mirror has the Tories on 42 percent (down 2 percentage points); Labour on 36 percent (up 4); and the Lib Dems on 11 percent (down 4). There’s also a hefty lead for Brown on the question of which party leader is best to steer the country through the recession: he’s on 41 percent, with Cameron on 29 percent.
The more the post-PBR landscape solidifies, the more questions people in the Westminster Bubble have to ask of themselves. The general view among politicos, commentators and journalists – including myself – was that the PBR and the Damian Green affair would be damaging for Labour. But the polls we’re seeing show the very opposite. It seems the public are, to some extent, buying Brown’s world-saving narrative.
Of course, it’s not all good news for the PM. It shouldn’t be forgotten that he’s still trailing the Tories; that the Tories remain, on average, above the 40 percent mark; and that the Government will have to deal with an ever grimmer real economy in the new year. But as Jackie Ashley puts it in today’s Guardian, “‘The worse it looks, the better Gordon does,’ was last month’s joke. It isn’t a joke any more.” There’s a very real possibility that Team Brown will successfully spin each disaster – and each half-baked yet oh-so-costly rescue scheme* – into a “doing everything we can” PR triumph. And with that comes the possibility that the Tory poll lead will be eroded even further.
* The next of these may come courtesy of Peter Mandelson. It’s reported that he’ll be announcing a set of measures for the UK car industry later this week.
UPDATE: Daniel Finkelstein comments on my post here. His key contention:
“The polls do not – as Peter suggests – show “the very opposite” of damage to Labour from the PBR. What they show (and I agree that even this was a surprise, given the coverage) is that the PBR made little impact on voting behaviour.”
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