Milliband the prophet

This David Milliband clip cannot be reposted often enough. Prescient or what?

Latest Opinion Poll

I always like to leave it a while before I comment on Opinion polls, when they first appear there is either an unnatural excitement or a dismissive attitude depending on what the poll says. The latest opinion poll from YouGov appeared last night and the headline figures are absolutely sensational. The Conservatives have a rating of 49%, Labour 23% and the Lib Dems 17% a Conservative lead of 26%. If repeated at a General Election on a uniform swing Labour would be annihilated and the Conservatives would have a majority heading up towards 300. This poll will add to the sense of impending doom which is beginning to define this stage of the Labour government.

There is nothing of comfort for Labour in this poll, there is no Labour politician featured in the poll who would not do worse than Gordon. The poll rating for Labour is easily one of the most catastrophic in its history, and we need only compare it to the 25% or so that Michael Foot actually acheived in 1983. Now an opinion poll taken when we are almost certainly 2 years out from a general election is probably worthless as a predictor of the outcome however the trend is there for everyone to see. The Conservatives are in a formidable election winning position. This poll is about the limit of most Conservative’s wildest dreams and I doubt there will be a significantly better poll than this. I blogged earlier in the week about whether we are at the tipping point, we will know more after the Crewe & Nantwich by election where I’m hearing rumours that Labour are struggling and could get pushed into third, I think that by the time Parliament rises for the Summer recess expectations of a Conservative victory big or small will have been locked in. By then I suspect even Labour will be privately conceding that the next election is lost with the only questionmark being the scale of that defeat. This is the sort of poll that is pointing to a paradigm shift in public attitudes.