Tories open historic lead over Labour in (UK) poll

[brooklynite]

Source: The Telegraph

The Conservatives have opened up their biggest lead over Labour since Margaret Thatcher was at the height of her powers as Prime Minister almost 20 years ago.

If the opinion poll results were a general election David Cameron would probably be Prime Minister

An exclusive YouGov poll for The Daily Telegraph puts the Tories on 43 per cent - 11 points ahead of Labour, who have sunk to just 32 per cent.

...snip...

The lead - the Tories biggest since Baroness Thatcher's heyday in 1988 - demonstrates the extent of the crisis now gripping Gordon Brown's government in the wake of the run on the Northern Rock bank, the loss of 25 million child benefit records and the party funding scandal.

Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=YNU4R4NNI1KAZQFIQMGCFFOAVCBQUIV0?xml=/news/2007/11/30/npoll130.xml

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Interesting that Iraq wasn't mentioned at all as an issue. Maybe because they're already getting out?

[Bandit]

1. They can give full responsibility to Tony blair for this..

He pretty much screwed the pooch for everyone..

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Actually, they're doing their best to contunue screwing up

but you could say Blair set the tone for the party.

The Northern Rock stuff (at least, all the government involvement) was all after Blair. Whether they have acted reasonably on that, or whether they're going to lose billions of public money on it, remains to be seen.

The loss of 25 million personal records comes from the culture of corner-cutting in the Inland Revenue - which may have started when Blair was PM, but Brown was in charge of the IR, and had a huge influence on the budgets of all government departments. He takes at least joint blame with Blair for that one.

The funding scandal started under Blair, but continued under Brown. How much they personally knew is murky (and I'm sure the party is doing it's best to keep it that way, especially now the police have been called in), but again, there's a culture of 'the rules are there to be bent' that came from Blair, but Brown has continued. His leadership election team refused an illegal donation itself (anyway, he was unopposed - maybe they thought it wouldn't be necessary), but then suggested Harriet Harman's deputy leader election campaign take one.

[Rydz777]

4. Yes, Blair got out just in time and left his mess behind - just

like Bush is going to leave a mountain of trouble behind for his successor. If our Democratic Congress doesn't hold firm and stop this misbegotten war before the next inaugural, there will be no honeymoon - only war, recession, sinking dollar, and general malaise.

[DavidDvorkin]

2. Oh, shit

This bodes ill.

[LeftishBrit]

5. There won't be an election for two years or so...

A lot can happen in that time.

Also just to note that the Daily Telegraph has a certain bias; we call it the 'Torygraph'.

[DavidDvorkin]

7. But isn't YouGov considered pretty reliable?

[T_i_B]

10. YouGov polls are generally skewed a bit rightwards

as they tend to go for a more affluent demographic.

That said, the government is not having the best of times so I would not dismiss the poll out of hand. Something would be very wrong if Labour wasn't down in the polls what with Northern Rock, losing child benefit data and the current party funding shenanigans.

[liberalpragmatist]

8. Also, isn't the British press generally very anti-Labor?

Not that there aren't real reasons for Brown's current popularity, but I feel that the UK press is just extremely vicious in general, especially to Labor PM's -- you have the right-wing Tory press and then you have the left-wing (tabloids plus the Guardian and the Independent). And the left-wing press generally is very ardently left-wing and tends to be very critical of Labour.

I also find it stunning that just a month and a half ago Brown had an 11 point lead and approval ratings in the 60s. Is that evidence that public opinion could still change back similarly? Or was that just a fluke?

I would guess the biggest problem Brown would face is simply that Labour will have been in power for 12 or 13 years when the next election is held -- it's rare for any party to hold office uninterrupted much longer than that (although the Tories did when they won that '92 upset).

[AX10]

6. Add to that: Labour wants cameras on every corner...

and a DNA database of every citizen and VISITOR!

Tony Blair was the worse thing that could have happened to Labour.

[LeftishBrit]

9. That isn't something that happened recently...

The turnaround in the polls is recent and is mainly, as the reports say, due to the crisis with Northern Rock; a scandal (fairly petty by international standards) about party funding; and most of all to the fiasco where ID information about thousands of people of Britain (in connection with child benefit) got lost in transit(!) and could get into the hands of all sorts of crooks, for all anyone knows.

Blair was indeed a disaster for Labour. But much of this latest was done since Brown - though the child benefit thing does reflect a Blairite culture of control-freakery balanced by incompetence and excessive cost-cutting.