Frank Luntz is the Marmite of polling: you either love him or hate him. His focus group on Newsnight tonight comparing the three party leaders made—as expected—for interesting viewing. Although I’d have preferred to see the potential Labour leadership candidates tested. I imagine that the Lib Dems will be crowing for weeks about its finding that people warmed far more to Clegg than the other two party leaders.
The first thing that struck me was how Tony Blair still so dominates British politics. The panellists saw both Brown and Cameron through the prism of Blair. When the group were offered the chance to bring Blair back, they went for it overwhelmingly. One can only imagine how febrile the speculation would be right now if Blair was still in the Commons.
Of more immediate relevance, however, was the further evidence that the focus group provided about what a risk the Tories are running with their tax policy. When Cameron talked about how the Tories can’t promise tax cuts the panel dialled him down, when Clegg talked about tax cuts they almost unanimously dialled him up.
If the Lib Dems can get their new tax cutting message across, they could eat into Tory support. The word on the street is that George Obsorne’s conference speech will contain two big policy announcements. It would be sensible for one of these to be tax relief for the middle classes. Going into the election with the only sizable Tory tax cut on offer being raising the threshold for inheritance tax to a million pounds would suggest that the Tories are dangerously out of touch with the zeitgeist.
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