Tolling Bells

Seems to me that just about all the polls, dodgy or not, are showing that the Conservatives are pulling ahead. But the Angus Reid one (and they're the most trustworthy pollster, we are led to believe by some) today in the Express, should send shockwaves through the Labour party. It is Labour's worst poll since 1918 and, if repeated, would represent the eclipsing of Labour by the Liberals - who knows for how long. The marginals poll, as reported in the Spectator, confirms the trend too: the bells are beginning to toll for Labour.

Generally speaking, therefore, from now on, it is pretty clear that the best Labour can hope for is to limit the damage in this general election as far as possible, and try to come out of it with at least its core vote just about in tact. As for the blame game, I think that's already started with party loyalists not having to look too far for the main culprit. The only problem is that in blaming Brown for an atrocious campaign and for dividing the party, Labour MPs also condemn themselves. It was them that arrogantly installed him unchallenged as leader in the first place, and the electorate knows that.

A strong element in the causes of Labour's dwindling support must be the punishment factor. I can tell you pretty confidently that people I know, for instance, have never forgiven Labour for inflicting Brown on us without even a leadership election for them to have a look at him first. They simply do not believe Labour any more, with good reason, and if not exclusively, then partly, because of this. They feel they've been taken for granted, and made fools of by a party that's completely out of touch.

Hang on, there's someone at the front door and my dog's gone bananas...

Well, now. That was timely. Labour activists delivering yet more leaflets, this time in person. I've got a stack of them now. They must really think this ultra-safe seat's become marginal, and that is truly extraordinary.

My dog. Cairn terriers do not like activists

But, a brief glance at the campaign literature handed to me by the jolly, red rosette wearing man and the drop dead gorgeous Labour woman (maybe they've done some research on me!) tells me that they still just don't get it. Nothing in the pamphlet will change people's minds that they cannot be trusted to tell the truth. Quite the reverse, actually - it just confirms people's suspicions in that it contains, sadly, the same sort of now-familiar Brownite smears about, for instance, the Tories planning to eat pet cats or something (well, abolishing bus passes for OAPs, which is a lie). It's very depressing, desperate stuff and a strong indication to me that they are on the way out in Wales for the first time ever.

My money is therefore still on an earthquake election, with Labour being hammered into third place and, if not Liberal-style oblivion, then a truly shocking reverse. Good news, if you think they deserve it, as I and an awful lot of other people plainly do.

They only have themselves, and Gordon Brown, to blame.

Winning The Argument

It should not be seen as much of a coincidence that on the day Greek debt is downgraded to junk, a poll comes out that lends weight to the view that the Tories are winning the key argument in this general election campaign, the economic argument.

The only game in town is Europe at the moment, with Portugal and, somewhere further down the road, Spain, next on the list for the dreaded rating drop. Whatever the virtues of wonderful and exciting policies such as Michael Gove's brilliant education plan, which has already caused a Damascene conversion of former Fabian research chairman and now editor of the Jewish Chronicle (Martin Bright take note), Stephen Pollard, the vindication of the Tories in at least promising to focus urgently on Britain's own Brown/Labour-caused debt crisis is surely now unchallengeable. Brown and Labour can go on denying the seriousness of the crisis all they want, but that will not make it go away.

And that's clearly why people increasingly are now seeing that they must therefore make Labour go away on May 6th. The stakes have never been higher - for everyone. One thing's for sure, a hung parliament or, heaven forbid, five more years of Brown - though one could and most likely would lead to the other - and we would be the ones in the unfortunate Greeks' shoes next: 16+% government borrowing interest rates, a shattered credit rating and staring down both barrels of a titanic debt default and a bombed out economy.

But the message is finally getting through: Brown or Clegg mean economic crisis and meltdown. And only the Tories offer any hope of averting both.

This Is How It Ends...

Not with a bang, with a bust-up.

The anti-Brown press - which is just about all of it, isn't it? - is turning the screw on Labour today. Apart from the Mirror, of course, but no one reads that, there are reports coming in all over the place of recriminations beginning for what has been a terrible Labour election campaign, of splits between several factions appearing and of maneuvering behind the scenes to replace Brown already starting.

So far, we have seen Brown flip flop over the Liberal Democrats in two - let's be honest for a minute here - generally dreadful TV debates for him, and during which he looked old and tired set against a pair of fresh-faced, would-be political assassins standing nearby, looking like peas in a coalition. Forget about what Brown said - (which was heard-it-all-before tractor stats in the main anyway) - it's how he looked that counted. And he looked awful.

But is his problem really that superficial? Is it really a case of no style, just substance? Well, of course not. He does have a style of sorts, it's just not a particularly pleasant one that usually involves swearing at people off camera and growling like some statistic-obsessed, gummy old circus lion while on it. Also, "style" - which I assume in this case means an awareness of the needs for certain kinds of presentational and rhetorical skills to communicate a message forcefully but attractively - does not denote superficiality, quite the opposite in fact. So no, Brown's problem is not just that he lacks the charisma or charm of a Cameron, it's that he lacks the debating skills, too. That's a talent gap and one that Clegg does not share with him, as we have learned.

It's not just Brown who's been shown-up in his true light- hiding from the public throughout his so-called campaign, talking to small rooms full of T-shirt-wearing die-hard Labour loyalists, leaving TV viewers with the impression that he's actually talking to himself - using an autocue(!) - it's the disunited team full of second raters behind him too. What twit put Ed Miliband in charge of the manifesto? What fool put Peter "Divide and Rule" Mandelson in charge of party unity? What idiot put wee Dougie Alexander in charge of the coffee and cream cakes? That is a role call of mediocrity if ever I saw one ( have I got those roles right? They seem to change so often these days). And Labour has them coming out of its ears and we're fed up to the back teeth with them.

Now, I know you will disagree with me about Mandelson, but before you do, just think very carefully and ask yourself what, exactly, he has achieved in his time in office that warrants the kind of respect and lavish praise he receives all the time? Is it because people are frightened about what he'll do to them if they don't toe his line? Of course it is. But to me, that's no measure of political success - or of great service to your country. No, poisonous he may be, and an effective Labour party heavy and paid-up Euro goon too, but true statesman he ain't and never will be. Remember, the answer to all of the above "What idiot..." questions is not just "Gordon Brown", it's "Peter Mandelson", too. Seems he slithers out from under the charge of incompetence, though, because that's what he does. Brown, fortunately, doesn't. The full tidal wave of disapproval is about to reach landfall and swallow him up, before spitting him out hundreds of miles from Number 10. Mandelson already has a lifeboat standing by, with the EU logo stamped all over it.

It's hard to tell how bad this defeat will be for Labour. Just like Boris Johnson, I hope it is one of those earthquake moments where their deceit, mediocrity, anti-democratic behaviour and general, total failure leads to their final demise, with the Lib Dems taking over the mantle of official Opposition to a Conservative government with a working majority. One thing is pretty clear to me: the final leaders' debate is an irrelevance. It's sort of like the final Test in a dead rubber. You go to see it because you like the sport, and someone might do something interesting. But nothing can change the fact that (from Brown's perspective) the series has already gone. In other words, once again, I think the polls are flattering them and I firmly believe the defeat for Labour will be shattering.

For forcing the unelected, unelectable, utter disaster Brown on us for three years, that would be less than Labour deserves. As it is, they've run out of ideas and run out of options. All we will see from here until election day is the sad old fraud making bigger and bigger speeches in front of smaller and smaller rooms of loyalists, perhaps even after the election is over and the counts have come in. But he'll keep on going, not willing to believe that the game is finished and the crowd's gone home. Someone from Sky News watches on a monitor; the live feed was pulled hours ago. The producer signals to the cameramen to get ready to pack up - it's time to go - as he reaches down and flicks the switch on the monitor and, for the last time, turns Brown off. Click.

And then he was gone.

The Great British Public: Too Thick For Change?

Of all the many posts written about the LibDum double act (Cable & Son) and its nonsensical, lightweight, irrelevant manifesto, I have enjoyed not a single one. Mainly because by their very existence they operate from an implied premise that it's worth engaging with these Yellow Tit-coloured, failed Labourists/Tory rejects.

So I won't be saying any more about that. What I will talk about instead is a pretty startling post by Daniel Finkelstein on his Times blog this morning about a poll for that newspaper which shows that the majority of people had no idea that it was the Tories who were offering to abolish the National Insurance hike for businesses and low/middle earners. They thought it was Labour (the party responsible for the rise)! But are the Fink's conclusions sound?

Think what this means.

First, that most voters are not following the argument one little bit. For a week this was headline news, yet they still ascribe the policy to the wrong party.

Second, and further to many past posts and many arguments, voters see policy only through their understanding of a party's values. The only policy of eight that was correctly attached to a party by the majority of voters was the marriage tax one.

According to him, therefore, all the great British public's political perception amounts to is a mixture of blissful, bored, complacent ignorance and a kind of passive awareness of propaganda terms associated with parties ("values"), rightly or - as is far more often the case - wrongly.

I disagree. These conclusion are based on fuzzy logic. A crisper, less politically explosive theory would be that all the poll really means is that the Tories - and this is comes as a big shock to me - have completely failed to get through to people, something that Margaret Thatcher (and even John Major) managed to do - and with, on the face of it, a far less palatable message.

The great British public is not thick, as in stupid. But it is thick, as in weighty and hard to move. Well, the Tories better start shifting their policies soon, or else...

...or else they'll wind up with a smaller majority! Boom boom.

Poll Paranoia

Polls during this general election campaign, and before it, for a variety of reasons have been more frequent and less helpful than at any time before. The idea that simply doing more and more polls and then 'weighting' them with a series of arcane, largely untestable methodological tricks, usually hidden from the public (though Mike Smithson, among others, has helped to correct that state of affairs) is one that I think is simply an extremely expensive waste of time carried out by self-styled professional psephological gurus happy to take the cash. The YouGov "daily tracker" is probably the worst offender being, as it is, about as reliable as a Met Office long term weather forecast (see the Daily Telegraph from a few days ago). But it is by no means the only one.

The media loves it, of course, especially if these dodgy measurements of voting intentions suggest a close call - and a hung parliament. Big News! Sells papers and sucks in viewers. So they drive that narrative, using these non-statistics as evidence. The hung parliament trope has become the most popular recently, much to the delight of the MSM, but not, it seems to me, to the Labour party, who have been largely silent on the subject. Why? Certainly not because they are confident of winning. The more-likely reason is that they have about as much faith in these exercises in statistical soothsaying as I do.

Not so the media, however, with a new ICM poll out about key marginals, commissioned by Murdoch rag the News of the Screws and faithfully advertised by Spectator editor Fraser Nelson. Taken at face value, Nelson's argument that the 'extensive research' that took place to produce this poll might seem to make sense; that the Tories are going to need a hell of a lot more than the 5% swing they think they need because, so the poll allegedly shows, they aren't performing as well as they thought, with the LibDums nicking votes from them left, right and centre.

Aside from the fact that Nelson also works for the Screws, and therefore Murdoch, and the fact that it's the parasitic Murdoch media machine, particularly Sky News, that is pushing the hung parliament story at every opportunity (complete with a misleading poll ticker appearing 24 hours a day on their rolling news channel), scratch beneath the surface and you see that this earth shattering poll in nothing of the sort. It's hardly more reliable than a complete guess. Just look at the size of the sample, as mentioned in the small print:

Here's the small print: ICM Research interviewed a random sample of 1001 adults aged 18+ by telephone on 7-8th April 2010. Interviews were conducted across the 96 (new boundary) constituencies which are held by Labour where the Conservatives require a swing of between 4 percent and 10 percent to win the seat.

As commenters on the blog have quickly pointed out, 1001 people over 96 constituencies?! You have to be kidding. That's about ten people per constituency. As I said, they might as well have saved themselves the thousands it cost to do that and just thrown a dart at a bunch of numbers pinned to the wall for all the use a poll like that is. But Nelson still banged on about it as though it was remotely meaningful, proving once more, at least to me, either that he is compromised by his connections to the News of the World, or that he's just not as smart as I thought he was, or that he just as much a fully paid up luvvie member the fourth estate as every other hack and hackette infesting this country, 'blogging' or no 'blogging'.

The point? The point is that my hunch - that the Tories are actually miles ahead, but that people simply aren't ready to admit that yet, or that these polls are so flawed, they would never reflect the reality - is worth just as much, if not more, than the polls themselves. And so is yours, dear reader. So the Tories do not need to develop poll paranoia. They certainly don't need to "panic", as Nelson helpfully suggests in the picture accompanying his dishonest/incompetent article.

The only danger is that all this hung parliament speculation, regardless of the flakey, fake stats that's driving it, will become a self-fulfilling prophesy, thus handing Labour an unexpected lifeline - and selling the country down the river. No wonder the Tories kept Murdoch's empire at arm's length when it turned coat again and came out for them. With friends like these. In addition, it's plausible that poll paranoia will catch hold in the Tory party itself, again making the whole thing self-fulfilling.

Nevertheless, despite the media's attempts to drive the outcome of this election, I firmly believe that the damage that's been done to Brown Labour, and that it's done to itself (not least by allowing Brown to become leader unopposed in the first place) is so grave, not even corrupt media organisations and shockingly crap pollsters can save them now.

Have I gone too far? I'll tell you on May 7th. Or someone will tell me, no doubt. What I suspect, though, is that on May 7th, Britain will have a Tory government with a comfortable, if not large, majority - and an awful lot of pollsters and tame journos, once the noise from the celebrations have died down, are going to have an awful lot of egg on their collective mugs.

Bouncing Back

This News of the World ICM poll puts the Tories back on 40%. Now, I realise that I've had a bit of a dig at the mainstream polls on this blog over the past few weeks, and the fact that people all over the place seem to have been falling for Labour's propaganda - and their ridiculous 'Tory shambles' narrative. But I'd just like people to be reminded of a couple of things.

Firstly, just about all of these polls employ arcane methodologies that weight everything in Labour's favour. In other words, even when the Tories are bouncing back, as they seem to be now, there has to be a powerful suspicion that the reality is that Labour were never anywhere near them in the first place; that the polls themselves were entirely misleading, insofar as they painted a picture of, at one point (laughably), the possibility of Brown actually forming the next government, somehow. And they still are misleading, in that they are suggesting that the Tories are recovering in some way, when, in fact, all they are doing is further consolidating and increasing their lead. I reckon you can add another five points onto the Tories' lead in this ICM poll. That would bring it into line with the only pollsters I trust: Angus Reid (who recently put the Tory lead at 14 points).

In addition to this is the fact that Cameron has had a tremendously good couple of weeks. You can say whatever you like about the Ashcroft thing, which appears to have exercised the minds of some of the bigger bloggers, like Guido, but to ordinary people I guarantee that this non-issue isn't even on the radar. I felt, and others I have spoken to (at least, those few who were interested) felt that Cameron handled it pretty well. Take the thing away altogether, and you are left with Cameron's excellent performance at his party's spring conference and his confident, crystalising and increasingly positive message about the appalling state of the nation, Brown-Labour's legacy, and what he's going do about it. In contrast, Brown has been, well, just Brown. Lying to the Chilcott enquiry, talking more nonsense about the debt crisis (1) and the economy he destroyed and now playing party politics once again with our armed forces with yet another unwanted, unwarranted trip to Afghanistan.

People are not stupid. They see that Brown is desperate and will, as John Major is apparently about to say, try anything to stay in power. On the other hand, they look at Cameron and they see a leader who is finding his voice - and preparing for office. These dodgy polls might reflect the direction of public opinion, therefore, but, because they are so flawed, they certainly can't be trusted to provide accurate figures for the actual state of the electorate's voting intentions. I therefore maintain that whatever the polls say, Labour are about to get the biggest electoral kicking of their lives, and deservedly so. And, as I also said before, I've put my money where my mouth is.

Finally, it's worth offering a final piece of evidence that Cameron really is getting into his stride (or, to please the doom-mongers, but obviously not his detractors, 'bouncing back'). His speech today to the Welsh Conservatives in Cardiff Llandudno (only the wrong end of the country! Thanks to Strapworld for putting me right) was terrific. And even the Spectator agrees!

(1) Prodicus is excellent on this particular Brownian nightmare this evening. Worth the read.

Dodgy Polls

Labourists of all kinds - and the MSM, who are just gagging for the drama of a close run thing - seize on polls with tiresome haste that superficially show some kind of a contraction in the Tory lead. Immediately, after one of these polls is published, you get the usual, desperate crap from the schizoid left media about how they can win (and deserve to win, astonishingly) another five years of incoherent Labour vandalism, and the usual, desperate crap from the schitzoid right media that still can't work out whether David Cameron is a 'good Tory' or not. It's all just terribly sad - and terribly inaccurate.

Thankfully, though, we have Mike Smithson, who actually takes a genuine interest in how these polls work (because there's his reputation and real money at stake) - and has become, consequently, comfortably the most trustworthy source of wisdom on most things psephological around, especially when it comes to what can be succinctly put as the 'fudge factor'. Most polls are inaccurate, misleading fudges, given their reliance on generally untested, and/or deliberate bias-generating methodologies.

Take the latest MORI poll, for instance (which put the Tories just a handful of points in the lead). This is what Smithson has to say about it:

Just been looking at the detailed dataset from the the Telegraph’s Ipsos-MORI poll that came out late last night and in my view the underlying numbers are nothing like as good for Labour as the five point Tory lead might suggest.

After weighting for standard demographics we find that:

300 of those certain to vote in the sample said they had supported Labour at the last general election. Yet only 236 of everybody in the poll said they planned to vote Labour at the coming election.

229 of those certain to vote in the sample said they had supported the Tories at the last general election yet 274 of everybody in the poll said they planned to vote for the party at the coming election.

My simple calculation puts the 2010:2005 ratio for the Tories at 118.7% while with Labour it was 78.7%

So the MORI’s own numbers suggest that Labour is down more than a fifth on last time while the Tories are up by about a sixth. Given that the split in 2005 was L36.2-C33.2 then the latest poll, if it had had politically balanced sample, would have ended up with a lead a lot bigger than the reported 5%.

I know that this is me being mischievous and highly selective but it does show the massive challenge phone pollsters face - because of the systemic problem of the over-sampling of Labour past voters.

Ponder that for a moment, if you will. And then understand why it's a very good idea to put your money where your instinct is and back if not a Tory landslide (as I have) then a healthy Tory majority.

Whatever these dodgy polls say about Brown, the fact is that we, the British public, just aren't that into him - never have been, and never bloody well will be.

So one other thing I will savour from his total demise on May 6th (I think we can safely say now that that's when the election will be) is the prospect of the entire MSM and all the major polling houses being made to look like the mugs, charlatans and dinosaurs they really are. They all deserve to go as extinct as Brown come that fine day in early summer, this year.

Tory Lead Ticks Up As History Repeats Itself (Again)

After a day which saw the worst government borrowing on record for the month of January, causing severe pressure on sterling and the markets, and bank lending to businesses and prospective housebuyers to tank once more, at least there was some good news today, from a Conservative perspective and, therefore, by implication (as far as I'm concerned) a national perspective. Reliable new pollsters, Angus Reid (courtesy of PoliticalBetting) place the Tories a full 14 points ahead of Crash Gordon's Labourists.

However, not everything looks rosy for David Cameron. Jeff Randall, nobody's fool when it comes to the not-so subtle relationship between business confidence and political leadership, has written a powerful comment piece for tomorrow's DT, ahead of his Sky interview with the future Prime Minister next Monday, which suggests that Cameron could well be facing some awkward, but nonetheless timely and utterly vital, questions about how he plans to rescue Britain from Brown's debt disaster. It's well worth the read. For instance:

History has much to teach us in today’s financial crisis, not least that we have been here before in one form or another. The economy is in a mess, government spending is out of control, and our currency is being devalued. Desperate ministers, fearing disaster at the polls, seek to denigrate opponents by labelling them “toffs”.

Put another way: “Our finances have been brought into grave disorder. No British Government in peace time has ever had the power or spent the money in the vast extent and reckless manner of our current rulers... no community living in a world of competing nations can possibly afford such frantic extravagances... the evils which we suffer today are the inevitable progeny of that wanton way of living.”

This analysis, crisp and incontrovertible, could have been penned last week by David Cameron to sum up Gordon Brown’s shambles. It comes, however, not from the current Tory leader but Winston Churchill in the Conservative Party’s manifesto for the general election of 1951. Much has changed since then, yet the immediate political challenge facing Mr Cameron is not dissimilar to the task Churchill confronted 59 years ago.

There's much more to the article, however, good though this part was (and quite surprising the first time you read it, too). Randall ends it with a virtual crib sheet of substantive policy questions that he'll put to Cameron on TV next Monday. Cameron must not fluff his lines. He must not obfuscate or indulge in the tired, divisive political rhetoric that characterises 13 years of this dishonest and finally disastrous Labour government. He must answer honestly, clearly and with passion. He must punch the weight of his party, which has won the argument on the economy and must now win a strong mandate to put right Labour's many crimes. And do you know what? I believe he will.

But if he does need to call on the wisdom of an historical figure to bolster his political resolve and help him to steel himself for the massive challenges, that we all face, ahead, he could do far worse than to invoke the memory of Churchill (or, for that matter, another post-war Conservative PM who saved us from the grievous distress caused by a previous Labour government, and to whom Randall also refers in his excellent piece).

Conservatives Resurgent

Springtime for Britain and Cameron

The Spectator's David Blackburn has written this revealing piece on the recent so-called Tory "wobble". Now, I didn't see it quite like that. Admittedly, there were some mixed messages over cuts, but ultimately, at least to me, it was not so much of a wobble as the inevitable backlash from the vast, almost universally leftish mainstream media when Cameron finally came out fighting on policy in January. The "right" media, that sees itself as some kind of torch-bearers of what they imagine to be "real" Conservative values, enjoyed fanning the flames, too: the ridiculously conflicted and editorially rudderless Telegraph does it from both sides at once these days. (It's quite novel, that.) But they - people like Simon Heffer - just don't like Cameron, and never will - mainly because he's not Margaret Thatcher, I assume. But he never will be Maggie. There's only one Margaret Thatcher - and Cameron, at least, knows that.

The point is that I certainly didn't feel that there was any improvement whatsoever in Incapability Brown's performance in January. Besides, even if there were some kind of progress made on his part, it was, past experience teaches us, bound to be torpedoed by his unmendable and all-encompassing shortcomings sooner or later. It was sooner. Having said that, in the end it was really Conservative policy that cut off his little dead cat bounce, and that should be a cause for celebration. Blackburn sums it up quite well:

The sudden devastation wrought on Labour by the Tories’ co-operative policy is evident in James Purnell’s waffling riposte. The validation of Tory economic policy, such as it is, from 20 leading economists and Sir Richard Branson provides a substantive alternative to the voluble, brilliant but wrong incantations of David Blanchflower. Cameron has returned to form at PMQs and Gordon Brown is reduced to giving lachrymose interviews to his friend, Piers Morgan. Resigned to defeat and ideologically exhausted, ministers hurl bland invective at Conservatives via Twitter. And even a Com Res poll indicates that the Tories are on the up, polling at 40 percent with an 11 point lead. The Conservatives were truly awful in January. They awoke to the New Year as staggering drunks; it’s mid-morning now and their hands have stopped shaking.

It looks like the "Conservatives were truly awful in January" idea has now become received wisdom. It doesn't matter, though and I suppose I can live with this little Mandelsonian propaganda triumph if I have to - mainly because January is over. The world and David Cameron have moved on. Only the bankrupt parliamentary Labour party and its dwindling numbers of diehard supporters don't seem to have grasped that. They still think it's Burns Night. Meanwhile, the Tories are resurgent, which is good news for everyone in the long countdown to the most important general election since 1979.

Doing It Where It Counts

Mike Smithson, upon whom I generally rely for all polling information - and whose opinion almost exclusively on most things psephological do I trust, rightly points out that the latest poll of the marginals reveals that the Tories are doing more than enough to secure a comfortable majority at the GE.

The poll, by Angus Reid, puts the Conservatives on a very solid 12 point lead. Smithson concludes:

What’s critical here are not the detailed numbers so much but that it
further supports the idea that the marginals are behaving differently from
others seats.
So in the non-marginals in this poll there’s about a 7.5% swing
from Labour to the Tories - in the marginals it is 10 11%.
A big caveat is that this is not a full poll - only a pretty chunky sub-set and we’ll have to see if this is the pattern in other AR polls in the coming weeks.
But overall it does support the argument that in one form or another we’ve been
making all week

It is an important caveat, and it's just that kind of professionalism that gives Mike Smithson his deserved reputation for reliability. I have no such contraints on me, though - no one is going to lose money if I'm wrong - so I'm happy to make a prediction that the Tories will be doing this well, if not better, in all the marginals. I also think people are generally pretty coy about the fact that they intend to vote for the Conservatives at the election: Labour's agitprop and smears have been that effective for years. But vote for the Tories they will, even if they don't admit it to pollsters beforehand, and in their millions.

This marginals poll, limited though it might be, tells me one thing pretty clearly: they're going to beat Labour by a landslide!

Betrayal? No, Just Politics

It might seem like betrayal to many Labourists, particularly on the left of that party, but red Aussie, pub-murdering dominatrix, Hewitt's, and the Hoon's call for a secret ballot on the Labour leadership comes as a last ditch, desperate response to the fact - yes, the fact - that Gordon Brown is, was and shall be right up to the election (but not beyond) the most unpopular and unwanted Prime Minister this country has ever had inflicted on it.

It seems that smarter Labour operators have finally woken-up to the fact that the so-called 'narrowing' in the polls is obviously a mirage. The trend in polling is terrible for them and it will only take one policy announcement by the Tories, a la inheritance tax in '07, that resonates with the public for that margin to become massive, meaning a wipeout worse than Major's in '97. People are looking for an excuse to obliterate Labour because people, (almost universally, if my straw poll of friends over Christmas is anything to go on, even the Labour supporting ones!), hate, blame and never wanted Gordon Brown. Of course, the only poll that really matters is the general election and those Labourists who seem slightly less bonkers than Ed Balls have rightly concluded that they face absolute meltdown with Brown as leader (assuming the Tories learn how to keep their mouths shut and don't adopt puppy murder as a key policy).

I wouldn't get too excited about all this, though. It makes for good telly and provides healthy blog fodder, but I still think that Labour MPs generally don't have, indeed never had, the bottle to oust Brown, on the strength of their lame performance last year, and having adopted him in that shameful coronation spectacle in the first place. In the end, this isn't really about the Labour leadership, terrible though it no doubt is. It's about the party itself, a party that is not just financially bankrupt, but morally and politically bankrupt, too. A party in this level of disarray is a party in a serious state of decay. It should therefore come as no surprise that they are in the position of being a bunch of cowards led by coward. The fact is that they deserve each other, which is why Brown probably will survive this latest domestic earthquake.

Meanwhile, the electorate waits, frustrated, angry and ignored, to give them all the biggest kicking of their pathetic lives - and to rid itself of Brown once and for all. But hey, that's not 'betrayal' is it? That's just politics.

The Nightmare Noughties

So the dust has just about settled on yet another Christmas Day, which means that we can take stock, count our presents, our blessings and our lucky stars and get back to the real world just so we can start the twelve month countdown to the next "season of goodwill." (I had a marvellous Christmas, by the way. I bought my parents the one thing they have never in their entire lives, for a whole host of excellent reasons, bought for themselves, namely, a brand new, top of the range TV. They were surprisingly and gratifyingly thrilled by it.)

But Christmas is Christmas. For me, cynical as I am and, after the communal warmth of a dutiful morning mass had (quickly) worn off, and the postprandial hangover of Boxing Day political reflection kicks in, thoughts turn to the next decade. Fortunately, at least for me, Simon Heffer, who ordinarily these days comes across as a rather reactionary old duffer, has refound his radical voice and framed the "Noughties", from which we have all just emerged significantly scathed, in terms everyone must comprehend. As is my bad habit, I've copied it for you here:

It is customary to find a sobriquet for a decade as it comes to a close – the Naughty Nineties, the Roaring Twenties, the Swinging Sixties – but I can think of none to describe the Noughties that is fit for repetition in a respectable newspaper.

The commanding image of the decade remains, more than eight years after the event, that of the aircraft flying into the Twin Towers in Manhattan in September 2001. The battle of the civilised world against the lunacy of Islamic fundamentalism dominated and poisoned the rest of the decade.

However – and however callous it seems to say it – we should have been lucky if that had been all we had to worry about in the past 10 years.

Sadly, it was not. Both away from the "global war on terror" and, most controversially, inherent in it, was a display of incompetence by a political class which it sought more and more to cover up by obfuscation, a retreat from democracy, and downright lies. We are reminded almost every day that lies were told to take us to war in Iraq, and that is probably so. Yet we hear less about the lies told to conceal the activities and identities of those responsible for the economic collapse in the developed world, which have done their own severe damage.

What happened to global prosperity in the Noughties was just as atrocious, in its way, as the conduct of terrorism and of some aspects of the battle against it. I wish we could have a proper public inquiry into the causes of that, with the persons responsible punished in an appropriately bankrupting way.

We leave this decade poorer than when we entered it. That is the result of having lived spectacularly beyond our means. We have, quite simply, not earned enough to afford the lifestyle we have chosen for ourselves: and now we are paying the price. Yet whose fault was that? Foolishly, many blame the bankers, easy scapegoats in a society driven by envy because of their champagne-stoked lifestyles and their vast bonuses. They also took idiotic decisions that imperilled the savings of their customers and the value of their shares – decisions that depleted the pension funds of millions of Britons.

But how were they allowed to do this? The answer is painfully simple. The same Government that refused to regulate the bankers properly also allowed an insane amount of liquidity to go into the economy, which gave them cheap material with which to play casino economics.

Labour's biggest lie is that America brought us the recession. The truth is that there, like here, the recession was brought to us by politicians, and Mr Brown is the prime culprit. This decade of debt is about to usher in a new one of hardship.

These failures were partly the cause of the advance of mediocrity. Around the world, too many leaders won office because they were good on television, or plausible con men. Too few reached the top because they were able and sensible. We are now all paying the price for being duped.

We shall be foolish if we don't learn a lesson from the enormous mistakes of the past 10 years. They are both social and economic. In the former sense, we must stand up for our right to a way of life as we desire it in this country, and as no one else has a right to dictate to us. Majorities have rights, too. Nor is there anything wrong with fighting to protect them, provided the battle is joined honestly and with democratic sanction.

And as for our economy: we have to close down large sections of the state. We have to get it out of our lives. We have to get our people off its payroll. We have to get our poor out of dependency upon it. In Britain, the decade ahead needs to be the decade of the individual. For it is we, the people, who will revive us, and not the state.

Think about that one thing, apart from all the other disasters: "We leave this decade poorer than when we entered it." Heffer is at his best when he presents to us in clear terms the simple, unhappy truth. He's done that here.

Our job is to make sure the next decade is successful, prosperous and, above all, politically rejuvenating. That's going to be tough, but it can't begin without the total destruction of the current travesty of a (British) government. When Brown's gone, we can begin.

Hope you all had a great day off, btw. I did :)

Arrest Blair

His many crimes, committed while he held office, are finally beginning to emerge. And they are most definitely crimes (in the sense that, you know, he broke the law, right - so, hey, he's not actually a pretty straight kind of guy after all. Right). But hang on, if they are crimes, and crimes they are, then arrest the shit, right?

Anyway, this dynamite litany of Blairite deceit will be revealed in tomorrow's Sunday Telegraph so people can then make their own minds up about whether we've been led by crooks, incompetents and liars for the past 13 years (or not).

On the eve of the Chilcot inquiry into Britain’s involvement in the 2003 invasion and its aftermath, The Sunday Telegraph has obtained hundreds of pages of secret Government reports on “lessons learnt” which shed new light on “significant shortcomings” at all levels.

They include full transcripts of extraordinarily frank classified interviews in which British Army commanders vent their frustration and anger with ministers and Whitehall officials.

The reports disclose that:

Tony Blair, the former prime minister, misled MPs and the public throughout 2002 when he claimed that Britain’s objective was “disarmament, not regime change” and that there had been no planning for military action. In fact, British military planning for a full invasion and regime change began in February 2002.

The need to conceal this from Parliament and all but “very small numbers” of officials “constrained” the planning process. The result was a “rushed”operation “lacking in coherence and resources” which caused “significant risk” to troops and “critical failure” in the post-war period.

Operations were so under-resourced that some troops went into action with only five bullets each. Others had to deploy to war on civilian airlines, taking their equipment as hand luggage. Some troops had weapons confiscated by airport security.

Commanders reported that the Army’s main radio system “tended to drop out at around noon each day because of the heat”. One described the supply chain as “absolutely appalling”, saying: “I know for a fact that there was one container full of skis in the desert.”

The Foreign Office unit to plan for postwar Iraq was set up only in late February, 2003, three weeks before the war started.

The plans “contained no detail once Baghdad had fallen”, causing a “notable loss of momentum” which was exploited by insurgents. Field commanders raged at Whitehall’s “appalling” and “horrifying” lack of support for reconstruction, with one top officer saying that the Government “missed a golden opportunity” to win Iraqi support. Another commander said: “It was not unlike 1750s colonialism where the military had to do everything ourselves.”

The documents emerge two days before public hearings begin in the Iraq Inquiry, the tribunal appointed under Sir John Chilcot, a former Whitehall civil servant, to “identify lessons that can be learnt from the Iraq conflict”.

Senior military officers and relatives of the dead have warned Sir John against a “whitewash”.

The documents consist of dozens of “post-operational reports” written by commanders at all levels, plus two sharply-worded “overall lessons learnt” papers – on the war phase and on the occupation – compiled by the Army centrally.

The analysis of the war phase describes it as a “significant military success” but one achieved against a “third-rate army”. It identifies a long list of “significant” weaknesses and notes: “A more capable enemy would probably have punished these shortcomings severely.”

The analysis of the occupation describes British reconstruction plans as “nugatory” and “hopelessly optimistic”.

It says that coalition forces were “ill-prepared and equipped to deal with the problems in the first 100 days” of the occupation, which turned out to be “the defining stage of the campaign”. It condemns the almost complete absence of contingency planning as a potential breach of Geneva Convention obligations to safeguard civilians.

The leaked documents bring into question statements that Mr Blair made to Parliament in the build up to the invasion. On July 16 2002, amid growing media speculation about Britain’s future role in Iraq, Mr Blair was asked: “Are we then preparing for possible military action in Iraq?” He replied: “No.”

Introducing the now notorious dossier on Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction, on Sept 24, 2002, Mr Blair told MPs: “In respect of any military options, we are not at the stage of deciding those options but, of course, it is important — should we get to that point — that we have the fullest possible discussion of those options.”

In fact, according to the documents, “formation-level planning for a [British] deployment [to Iraq] took place from February 2002”.

The documents also quote Maj Gen Graeme Lamb, the director of special forces during the Iraq war, as saying: “I had been working the war up since early 2002.”

The leaked material also includes sheaves of classified verbatim transcripts of one-to-one interviews with commanders recently returned from Iraq – many critical of the Whitehall failings that were becoming clear. At least four commanders use the same word – “appalling” – to describe the performance of the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence.

Documents describe the “inability to restore security early during the occupation” as the “critical failure” of the deployment and attack the “absence of UK political direction” after the war ended.

One quotes a senior British officer as saying: “The UK Government, which spent millions of pounds on resourcing the security line of operations, spent virtually none on the economic one, on which security depended.”

Many of the documents leaked to The Sunday Telegraph deal with key questions for Sir John Chilcot and his committee, such as whether planning was adequate, troops properly equipped and the occupation mishandled, and will almost certainly be seen by the inquiry.

However, it is not clear whether they will be published by it.

It's the worst, most profligate, incompetent, deadly, destructive, arrogant and shameless government we've ever had inflicted upon us - and still the polls remain slightly volatile, nonetheless.

But not after this Iraq stuff fully comes out, though, so there's really no need to worry. Brown and Labour are still dead in the water. And Blair really should be arrested.

Sealing the Deal

Obviously I'm in total agreement with the great William Rees-Mogg, who gave us a terrific, clear-headed and wise article in the Times this morning, when he says that Brown should not cling on to power. It's definitely worth reading, not least because his assessment of the several possible outcomes of the next election, according to polling evidence, all point only to one conclusion (as far as I can discern): Brown is such an unpopular and divisive figure, tainted by his dirty politics and spectacular failures, that he would find it incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to form a government even if Labour did win the most seats in a hung parliament, which all evidence to date suggests is the least worst possible outcome for them. Short of a miracle, Brown is sunk. As the author concludes, logically:

Most people do want the next general election to produce a definite result; they do not want to wait for a second election, as in 1974. The voters feel that it is time for a change. The Prime Minister has lost the confidence of the public.

There is also a pressing need to clear up the budget deficit. It is now so large that Government expenditure will have to be cut, and taxes will have to be raised by any government that may be elected.

We shall need a decisive prime minister, and, in comparison with Gordon Brown, David Cameron does seem to be a man who can make up his mind. Gordon Brown should have asked for a new mandate on the day that he become Prime Minister. I suspect that public reaction to his indecision and delay will produce a decisive election result in five months’ time.

Couldn't agree more, but that will not stop Brown from embarking upon the longest, most bitter, ugly and damaging campaign in British political history. It will start with the Queen's Speech but it will end in bloody election defeat for Labour. The most significant polling news yet that supports this view, and adds further weight to the arguments of William Rees-Mogg, can be found in this report in the Guardian about their latest ICM poll (hat tip: John Ward).

The Tory leader is now regarded as tougher, more decisive and more internationally respected than Gordon Brown, who has reaped little benefit from his stewardship of the response to the banking crisis.

Labour can draw some comfort from a narrowing of the gap between the two parties at national level – the Conservatives are on 42% to Labour's 29% – but that would still be enough to give the Tories a clear majority at the next election.

Equally worrying for ministers, Cameron appears to be cementing his reputation with voters on key issues of character – suggesting that voting Tory isn't just about being fed up with Labour, but is now being seen as a positive move.

Cameron is, after all, sealing the deal. Try as he might - and make no mistake now (as I have done in the past), he will most definitely try - there is nothing that Brown can do to halt the building momentum that is propelling Cameron to Downing Street - and the toughest job he could ever have wished for: clearing up the disastrous mess left behind by his unelected, worse than useless predecessor. I don't envy him that for one minute, but I will say this about Cameron: the fact that he wants to try certainly means he has courage.

Poll Boost For Cameron

CON 43 (+7) LAB 26 (+2) LD 19 (-6)

More poll gloom for Gormless Brown, then, as this latest Ipsos Mori poll places Labour 17 points behind Cameron's Conservatives. Mike Smithson seems to think that this is evidence that the conference season no longer has as dramatic an effect on the polling system as it used to. At least that's what I believe he means because he cites evidence from the last two (YouGov and ComRes) polls, which suggested a narrowing of the Tory lead post-conference, that seem to show the kind of pulsating percentages we have become used to and which happens every day anyway, with or without conferences.

The psephological guru also points to the fact that the only party that received a palpable conference bounce was the Liberal Democrats and that that has unwound at breakneck speed as their public exposure has crashed. Labour and Conservative politicians remain exposed, as it were.

I fully agree with Mr Smithson. He convinced me long ago that contemporary polling is far more reliable than it used to be, and provides a more trustworthy and fairer reflection of the electorate's real voting intentions than its equivalent a dozen or so years ago did. It's worth adding that the annoying YouGov daily tracker results should, in my humble, be dismissed as a gimmick because the methodology that makes modern polls so reliable was not applied to them. They are misleading so any 'bounce' they implied for any party should be discounted.

If all this is true, and these are extremely reliable polls, then they do indeed make gloomy reading for a Labour Party that surely must need very little further persuasion that it's time for a change at the top - as a matter of some considerable urgency now.

I do hope they remain spineless and chaotic, rather than miraculously discover some bottle and take the necessary steps to remove their biggest polling, and electoral, liability.

I think you - and they - know who I mean.

++Update++

Two more reliable polls this evening paint the same grim picture for Labour - and for Brown - with both pointing to a solid 17% lead for the Tories. I'll leave it to Professor Smithson to explain the implications - and deliver the interesting news that there's a new pollster in town.

ICM:

CON 44 (-1) LAB 27 (+1) LD 18 (nc)

A second pollster adds to Labour’s gloom

The second of tonight’s three polls, ICM’s for the Guardian, is out and shows very little change on the last survey from the firm taken in the immediate aftermath of the Tory conference and David Cameron’s speech.

A lot of people assumed that the last figures were down to the conference effect and that once we “got back to normal” then the scale of the blue lead would reduce substantially.

This view was accentuated by the Populus, Comres and YouGov surveys which all seemed to be pointing to a narrowing of the margin.

Well today’s two polls haven’t and this and now we await the third - the first regular monthly survey by the leading Canadian firm, Angus Reid Strategies exclusively for Politicalbetting, which is working with us as part of its effort to introduce a second substantial online pollster to the UK market. This is due out later tonight.

The ICM numbers coming on top of the MORI will be a severe disappointment to Labour which much have been hoping that things had started to turn. Seventeen point deficits only a few months before the election point to a rout

YouGov:

40% 23% 20%

A third pollster reports a 17 point Labour deficit

Tonight sees the launch of the exclusive new monthly poll by the leading Canadian firm, Angus Reid Strategies for Politicalbetting.com - and the timing could nor be more apt.

The main party figures are above.

The “others” are UKIP 5%: GRN 3%: BNP 3%: SNP 3%: PC 1%.

Extraordinarily the findings, like the ones from Ipsos-MORI and ICM earlier tonight show exactly the same Labour deficit - seventeen points.

Like YouGov polling is carried out online from a polling panel but unlike YouGov the sample is past voted weighted to what those questioned said they they did at the last election. YouGov weights by party ID.

The voting intention question has been designed to get respondents to focus more on what they will actually be doing in their particular seats in the hope of picking up any tactical intent. It reads “If a General Election were held tomorrow, which one of the following parties would you be most likely to support in your constituency?”

Angus Reid Strategies is applying for membership of the British Polling Council and is following its transparency requirements immediately. I am hoping to get a link up tonight so that the detailed tables can be down-loaded.

The sample size was 2.077 which is in line with most YouGov polls but is about double that which we see from the telephone pollsters.

Finally can I thank Andy Morris and his team at the firm. It’s been great working with them and I’m looking forward to our regular monthly poll as well as surveys of the key marginals.

Never has it been possible to say with more confidence that the polls don't lie. So the question, with three in a row now predicting catastrophe for Labour under Brown, still stands: what are they going to do about it.

The most likely answer is, of course, nothing.

Hat tip to Uncle Bob.

Maybe I Was Wrong...

CON 44% (+4) LAB 27% (-4) LD 17%(-1)

I'm more than happy to admit that maybe I was wrong yesterday about that speech by Cameron. According to this latest of Yougov's daily polls, I was. But I'm not so sure. I'm still convinced that Cameron shouldn't overplay the "pain" message. For one thing, this poll could simply be evidence that the message has got through to people - and that he means business.

One other point: I haven't had a chance to check the press or the blogs today so maybe someone else has already noticed it, but Cameron looked and sounded ill during his speech. He was gulping down water, his voice sounded weaker than usual and he looked plain rough. Perhaps that was all part of the act, but I doubt it.

So, the next big question is: has David Cameron caught swine flu!

Brown's Dishonesty Is Killing Labour

Comres verdict: Anyone but Gordon.

CON 38%(-2)LAB 23%(-1)LD 23%(+2)

Tomorrow will be painful for Gordon Brown at the make-or-break Labour conference, ahead of his make-or-break speech on Tuesday. A deluge of Sunday bad press, including rumours of his failing health (physical and mental) being stoked-up again by Andrew Marr, has been topped off by two bits of news that will turn the background speculation about how long he can cling on to the job he stole into outright rebellion. One is the latest Comres poll for the Independent, which Mike Smithson has analysed in some detail for us. The second is something from this morning that I think could turn out to be a massive own goal for Brown - he lied to Marr during that God-awful interview, according to Andrew Sparrow of the Graun.

First, the poll: it shows that not only have the Liberals caught up with Labour but that half the population, in theory, believes anyone would do a better job of leading Labour than Brown. But completely catastrophic poll ratings are one thing. Brown is used to them by now and they seem to have little effect on his delusional belief that he can somehow turn things around once he 'gets his message across'. But this lying about that stupid policy-on-the-hoof legislation for controlling bank bonuses - that's quite another matter. He said that Britain's proposals are the 'toughest in the world'. Patently unsustainable, says Robert Peston right away - the Dutch have strict caps on banker bonuses already, to name but one country. The Dutch rules are therefore tougher than anything Brown is (disingenuously) suggesting. This is just hit the hated bankers/Tories stuff (in the mind of the Left, the two are interchangable) not reasonable reform. Besides, those evil bankers were simply doing what Brown encouraged them to do for a decade, as I said earlier today. See? Dishonesty. It's the big theme with Brown.

You might well be thinking, "Brown told a big lie and he's been caught out (again). So what?" Well, it is actually pretty serious not just on its own terms - there was a time when ministers, even Prime Ministers, had to do the honourable thing and resign if they were caught lying about policy, for instance - but because it simply adds more grist to the mill (or further weight to Brown's millstone, perhaps) that Brown is not being straight with the people, that he is fundamentally a very dishonest man and that whenever he opens his mouth, a question pops straight into people's minds: what's he lying to me about this time? That is checkmate for any politician, but especially a so-called leader. It's time to bow out graciously and head off into the sunset of the American speech-making tour.

If anyone in Labour actually wants to know why they are nosediving in the polls and are about to become the third party in British politics, they need look no further than this morning's interview. People hate Brown because he keeps on lying to them. They never had the chance to choose him in the first place and they simply don't want him any more. Unfortunately for Labour, that means people in their eagerness to kick Brown hard and often will kick that party too. They are not learning though, it appears - probably because the parliamentary Labour party itself is populated by dishonourable, equally dishonest jellyfish, perfectly illustrated by the grim Scotland affair. (She still hasn't resigned, extraordinarily, despite firm evidence now emerging, thanks to Guido, that she's been lying, too).

So maybe Brown and Labour deserve each other, and the fate that awaits them. Judging by their God-awful, Tory-hating, drab, directionless, unattended conference so far, that's exactly what what the outcome of all their bluster and all their lies will eventually be.

Good.

Conferences Seem To Impress, No Matter How Bad They Are

Mike Smithson reports (very well, as always):

CON 39% (-2) LAB 26% (-1) LD 20%(+3)

YouGov poll gives the Lib Dems a boost at both other parties’ expense

A YouGov poll for tomorrow’s Telegraph will bring some welcome relief for the Lib Dems with a three point boost in their rating. Both the Conservatives and Labour are down, with the Conservatives dropping back below 40%. The changes are against the Sunday Times poll, conducted by YouGov and published on 11th September. All the changes are within the margin of error but only just in the case of the Lib Dems.

Despite the Lib Dem conference producing mixed messages from the platform and struggling to make much impact beyond a genuinely headline-grabbing ‘mansion tax’, it would appear that the public liked what they heard. It makes you wonder what a really successful conference might have achieved.

There look to be some interesting figures further down the questions on the various party leaders with the Telegraph claiming that none is as popular as his party. Without seeing how adjustments and don’t knows are counted, it’s difficult to draw too strong a conclusion but it’s not good news for Cameron if so (it’s not good news for any of them but Brown’s been personally unpopular and Clegg relatively anonymous for ages).

Of course, Labour and the Conservatives still have their own conferences to come and we’ll only get a true picture after they’ve all taken place. Even so, a small amount of humble pie on my part - it’s only one poll but if it’s representative, the Lib Dem’s do stand a good chance of gaining during the election campaign from the increased coverage.

I have to agree with these conclusions, sadly, but not the reasoning behind them, at least as it's presented in Mr Smithson's post.

I've got to say, mind you, once I had digested this poll and paused for a few moments to wonder and despair at the ease with which what seems to be a vast number of British people potentially are influenced by what is basically nonsense (the LibDim conference being the case in point), I realised that this actually signifies something I had known all along - because I feel it too: David Cameron must start leading not only the Conservative party, but the country as a whole. He has to set the agenda from here on in. The country has moved on from Brown and Labour - that's obvious. It's demanding better than Brown - but it's also demanding a choice.

So even though Cameron's still the Leader of Her Majesty's Official Opposition, he has to demonstrate that he is what the country clearly wants (and I want) - a real leader. If people, as this poll shows, are that easily swayed by empty, badly stage-managed speeches from a minor, disunited opposition party in a state of management confusion and policy disarray, then he has the opportunity - and the duty - to reveal that what he will offer is genuinely better than that. He has to show the country what real political quality looks like. (Clue: it doesn't look like Nick Clegg.)

The Labour conference might produce some brief holiday from his own uselessness for Brown, but it will ultimately be an irrelevance. The only conference that matters this autumn is the Conservative conference; the only speech that matters this autumn is Cameron's.

That's what this poll really shows and woe-betide the Tories if they don't take heed. This is their moment genuinely to shine in front of a massive, receptive national audience that's almost ready to trust them again and is willing them to succeed.

No pressure, then.

Portillo Doesn't Really Get It - We've Moved On From Brown

Just been listening to Michael Portillo arguing on This Week that it's in Brown's political interest to 'sort out' the public finances immediately because Cameron's 'inexperience' will somehow then tell against him and Brown's 12 years in office (his 'strength') will suddenly, somehow win him support. This misses a lot of elephants in the proverbial room. For one thing, it is not only the electorate that seems to have collectively moved on from Brown, as even former Brownite, spendaholic economics guru, Anatole Kaletsky, has now acknowledged in the Times, the wider media has too.

Added to this is the fact that there is precisely no evidence to support the idea that Brown accepts the cuts argument anyway, let alone has a firm agenda set for spending controls. He is psychologically, stubbornly opposed to the non-expansionist narrative. His reluctance to admit his errors (and lies) over public spending is testament to this. He has not promised cuts in the way his Chancellor (sort-of) has, he has merely given vague, generalised assurances about efficiency savings and the abandonment of 'unnecessary' and/or 'wasteful' departmental projects - in much the same way as he did in 2005 when he told the same lies to cut the ground from under Michael Howard's feet over the latter's modest proposals, explained in his brilliant manifesto, for an efficiency drive. The idea of genuine reductions in government spending, and bringing the deficit and debt under control, are anathema to Brown. He might have been bounced into using the 'c' word by his own party, but he did so reluctantly and he did it disingenuously. He hasn't changed - and he hasn't really changed his tune.

In fact, I think Portillo knows this and he was actually seeking to make a clever if implicit, disguised point about how boxed in Brown has become, as is always the way with someone who has a genuine problem facing up to reality. The reality is that the electorate have had enough of him, in every possible way. The reality is that he can't immediately start setting the agenda for real public spending cuts because he'll be straying straight into the unmarked political minefield that is Tory economic territory: sound money and the small state. In other words, he won't because he can't. Whether he knows this or not is quite another matter. I think evidence suggests not. That's what the public suspects, too - and that's why he (and Balls with his sudden, bizarre, £2Bn assault on his own department), and Labour generally, have no credibility in this key policy area. Unlike 2005, when debt-fuelled growth and Brown's property bubble were reaching their peak, in 2009 no one's buying the Brownite lies and spin any more. A crash, Gordon, is a crash and the leaders in charge at the time of that crash and the recession that follows will be forced to take responsibility for it - especially if they are responsible for it!

For this and a whole host of other reasons, Brown-Labour has completely lost the argument on public finance.

Add to this the view that, as is clear now from a succession of polls, in the minds of millions of Britons, Brown caused not only the debt crisis but the crash itself and the rampant recession that followed, and there is more than enough evidence to suggest that Labour under Brown is facing total wipeout, assuming David Cameron's Tories don't make cannibalism and the culling of all six week-old puppies owned by small children firm manifesto pledges. Labour's only hope of avoiding this fate is to oust Brown - and November looks like the month. Last chance. Don't they get that?

Regardless of them, we really have moved on - and there are signs the mainstream media is beginning to sense that. Slow on the uptake, aren't they?

But not as slow, it seems, as the Labour party.

All These Polls Add Up, Gordo

A new poll released by Pupulus puts the Conservatives on 41% and Labour on 27% - not in itself significant, you might think, but taken with all the others by all the polling firms and the numbers add up to a few inescapable conclusions, all of them alarming for Brown.

Political Betting puts it like this:

CON 41 (+3) LAB 27% (+1) LD 18 (-2)

This the first public survey by the firm since mid-July and clearly the comparisons above reflect that. The numbers are very much in line with all the other firms and show that there’s been very little movement during the summer.

Populus operates in a manner that’s very similar to ICM and, indeed, the firm usually uses ICM call centres to carry out its fieldwork. The main difference is that for its Times polls has a sample of 1,500 which is the largest of any of the phone pollsters.

There’s bad news for Brown - 65% of those interviewed thought that someone other than him would make a better leader.

I'm actually quite surprised by the 65% negative rating for Brown. I thought it would be much worse. It seems that 35% of the population are idiots.

The conclusions, though? The first one must be that Tory support now has definitely become solid. After the expenses scandal and the Hannan/NHS squabble, any damage that might have been infliceted has been completely repaired. Cameron has certainly not "sealed the deal" (a pointless, meaningless cliche anyway), but people to me seem to be resigned to the fact that the only way to kick out this failed Labour regime is by turning to the Conservatives. It just goes to show, no one really votes Tory out of love, they vote for them out of necessity. And quite right too. People trust them to fix Britain's broken economy - they've done it before, after all.

The second conclusion concerns Brown (ah, Brown, you again). His plummeting popularity is certainly a concern, but it is the pattern emerging in all the polls which will concern Labour grandees most. Even the ones technically weighted in Labour's favour are showing signs of shifting towards the Tories. To my inexpert eye, you can add a further three percent to an ICM or a Populus poll if you want to know an election outcome. That's what happened in the locals and Euros - and worse. Labour's vote is so fragile that they are one more Megrahi scandal away from total collapse. That scandal is bound to be lying in wait just around the corner. They have been overtaken by the Liberals before during the early Eighties, but that was at the expense of the Tories. It could be about to happen again. Suffice to say, Brown's position has just become even more precarious, if that is actually possible.

Finally, since this poll was conducted on behalf of The Times, the last word might as well go to it:

No party has ever recovered from being so far behind in the polls at this stage of a parliament to win the subsequent general election.

Opinion has hardened among voters that David Cameron will win an overall Commons majority, now expected by 57 per cent, up six points since mid-July.

The poll is devastating about Mr Brown’s position as leader. Just one third think he is the best leader that Labour could have at present. But nearly two-thirds (65 per cent) believe there are other Labour politicians who would make a better leader than Mr Brown. Some 48 per cent cannot think of anyone specific but believe “literally anyone would do a better job than him”.