Mike Smithson at http://www.politicalbetting.com has his doubts about the latest poll, and as you say he is always worth reading, but your broad point is obviously right.
The Tories have failed to come up with a convincing story.
And right now voters want action.
Of course the blame may come in time…
I wonder whether Brown will risk a 2009 election?

My tu’pporth (re-posted from smithson’s site):

1) Cameron has recovered the “natural” Conservative vote which they couldn’t get out in any of the last three elections. This should be enough to ensure that his is the largest party in the next Parliament. For an overall majority, he has to win over genuinely pragmatic “floating” voters. I suspect there is a significant overlap between these and what our cousins call 2low information” voters. Some polls suggest that he is doing so, others don’t. If in fact he can’t reach out beyond his natural support, his majority will depend on how the non-Tory vote splits.

(2) The Lib Dems will put on votes during the campaign. They always do, and always for the same reason. The mutual attacks of the other two parties turn off some voters (I would suggest particularly women, might be interesting to see if past polling and exit polling supports this thought) who turn to them because they seem “nice”.

(3) If MORI are going to weight public sector workers (who are over-represented in polls) they should also apply the same weighting to public sector pensioners. It is likely that their voting pattern is closer to that of public sector workers than it is to that of the electorate as a whole, and they are likely to answer pollsters (have the time, “altruistic bias”). MORI’s methodology may still undersample Tories.

All that said, any single poll should be treated with caution. But if this does turn out to represent where the polls stand during the next few months, yes, there will be an election next year. It’s a big “if” IMHO.

I’m going to put it down to Labour not being in the news for seriously bad stuff, and Conservatives barely being in the news at all.

The electorate isn’t convinced that Brown is to blame because they can see US banks are at the forefront.

So why is the pound is dropping like a stone against the dollar ? Sunny ,you think because everyone knows that stimulating demand is a good thing in a recession , that abandoning all fiscal restraint is also a good thing as well . It is never a good thing to get into debt in itself, as Labour have almost succeed in suggesting.
The US is in a position to fling demand at the economy , before Brown starting his pantomime global shtick , for several reasons . Firstly because by its own standards its national debt is less severe than ours ( and yes I know it is actually larger , that is not the point ). Fundamentals : some countries can manage borrowing better than others .Don’t take my word for it take Gordon Brown`s who for ten years has been telling us about a golden rule “over an economic cycle “. He is pretending that what we are experiencing now is not part of an economic cycle as if the clement global conditions did not effect us equally during the boom years . They did . Keynsian stimulus does not require you to over spend in a boom …additionally this high tax folly has given us a structurally fragile economy on the supply side. Not a problem the US has
In the US they take tax payer’s rights seriously and need convincing of the need to take what are sensible preventative measures . For that reason the argument of what is called the ‘left’ , there , is what would be a moderate position here given where they start from. You have got the point out of context.
Under Major we were able to cut interest rates by not having a horrifying amount of debt swelling at a terrifying rate as a starting point . After white Wednesday and another devaluation (not in itself a bad thing ) we were able to take advantage of it by not having to increase interest rates . This period set the foundation for the early successful New Labour period before the spend bug took hold. The key component , under Major and then Blair was control of public spending.
That way we could run low interest rates without a Stirling crisis . Brown is sailing into hitherto uncharted territory. He wants intererest rate cuts , a debt fuelled spending boom from a position of ultra high debt ,an unfunded tax give-away with a dysfunctional economy and ongoing Public sector demands that he shows no will to reform.
Public spending has to rocket up now because receipts are drying up and welfare is shooting up .This is a consequence not a response to the position we are in . Brown is calling it a fiscal stimulus to cover up the squander of the last ten years. Very little of this additional borrowing will be doing anything more than keeping people un employed and almost all of it is unavoidable. He is additionally covering the very old Labour game of an electoral sweetener with mumbo jumbo as well as serving his union paymasters in the Public sector who will avoid suffering . That this under the pretext of demand stimulus is a huge joke ,. There is no good “economic”. reason for diverting money from productive sectors into the relatively luxury world of equal rights coordinators and their swollen departments .

Brown is like someone who cannot pay his bills and takes advantage of a fire to chuck all the paper work into the flames . The global position is not as bad as he pretends and the many people facing unemployment have Labour to thank as much as bad luck.. We are in a ‘cling to mother’ phase now but it will not last and even many leftish commentators (eg Will Hutton) are deeply nervous that brown is saving his career but risking a generation of moderate progressive politics with his power mad hubristic gamble.

Newmania – while many of those points may be valid, the fact is that the Tories have done a very bad job of getting them across, in part because of internal disagreement.

Cjcj- Their problem is that the only honest response is bound to look “right wing”.This plays badly and raises valid fears ( have to say the BBC have swung into the breach on Brown`s side by making the Conservative position the story. It is not , it is the commentary.)
We are are still in a phoney war after abadoning Labour`s bonkers spending commitments the message has to be simple . Vote Labour pay more tax . Vote Labour pay more tax ad nauseum. Its true ,everyone knows its true .I`m quietly confident .

Should also be noted that Mori are the worst of the mainstream polling organisations. But yes, it is a funny turn of events. This could be good for us (whether left or right) though. A small majority or even a coalition might be far less insufferable than a Tory landslide.

I don’t like to go all Alistair Campbell about this – but a big part of this matter is presumably the narative.

Labour have a pretty strong narrative – that based on a massive global economic slowdown on the back of a collapse in credit that no one saw coming. And that is continuously backed up by the economic stories from places like france, germany and america. Likewise it is also backed well by the repeated scenes of major international leaders discussing exactly that.

And on top of that, Labour have exactly the right policy proposals for that narrative. Higher a monetary and fiscal stimulus matched by other countries too.

The Tories meanwhile judged this pretty well at first. They recognised that narrative and backed it by backing the government’s position. However, they then hit upon their ‘Osborne’ problem because he was unwilling to be kept on a leash and led the attacks on Mandelson. That caused a sudden jolt to the tory confidence and so they started to attack labour outright.

trouble is to do that Osborne has taken them away from a sensible narrative and into a situation where they are arguing against the government position, the French position, the German position, the American position, and so on. And no arguing that the UK’s specific problems mean we are totally different to those countries can really win out as the global narrative is well set.

And even talking about long term consequences is a bit of a weak attack when people are concerned with immediate job losses and such like.

If the tories had held course they would not be slipping so badly now. But they can probably bide their time again now since eventually economic hardship always hurts governments.

The Labour propoganda machine is going hell for leather at the moment, churning out one Gordon Brown press release after another. Every time I turn on the news, its Gordon Brown does this, does that. I expect to see him on the weather forecast: “and today Gordon brings you sunshine”.

The vast majority of voters have no knowledge of the inner workings of the economy. Labour spin drs know this and as long as they browbeat the broadcast news to keep Brown in the headlines – saying he is doing something – they will have success.

For all Cameron’s slickness, he still has a very small chunk of the Media to access. I mean, I’ve just heard Alan Sugar on BBC radio doing a blatant party political broadcast for Brown.

Isn’t it funny that leftist commentators are promoting Brown’s policies of tax cuts funded by huge debt? The very same policies they berated Bush for using.

Labour have a pretty strong narrative – that based on a massive global economic slowdown on the back of a collapse in credit that no one saw coming. And that is continuously backed up by the economic stories from places like france, germany and america. Likewise it is also backed well by the repeated scenes of major international leaders discussing exactly that.

This is true up to a point but although all countries are affected Britain has been building up particular problems over the last decade which have meant that we have been especially hard hit. No other major country has had a banking crisis to match those of Britain and the US for example. Brown’s claim that Britain is better placed than other countries to deal with the crisis is patently untrue and the chutzpah he has displayed in bemoaning the failings in policy which have led to the crisis whilst apparently forgetting who was following those policies for the last ten years is truly jaw dropping. And the Tories have let him get away with it.

And on top of that, Labour have exactly the right policy proposals for that narrative. Higher a monetary and fiscal stimulus matched by other countries too.

I think it remains to be seen if they are the right policies, but they are the only ones on the table and do have broad agreement. Certainly the Tories don’t have an alternative, and this is what is hurting them.

I also meant to add that to be fair to Brown he has played a major part in influencing international opinion over what measures are neccessary for a global response to the crisis. He has shown decisiveness and leadership, the very qualities he has been percieved as lacking, and I think this has certainly helped his poll ratings.

Andrew

Brown was indeed wrong to claim the UK was particularly well placed to ‘weather the storm’ – and the tories are similarly wrong to argue that the UK is particularly badly placed to do so.

Neither claims is particularly true, and neither claim helps their parties.

But yes, we will indeed have to wait and see how the policy efforts work out. In terms of the narrative they fit. In terms of results they may yet fail miserably.

If voters still don’t trust the tories on the economy we are also growing increasingly suspicious of Brown – if he is correct that it is no time for a novice then we should remember that Cable’s more than able!

I think we’ve seen the government attempt to protect money that people have saved. I think that the tories would have allowed Northern Rock to collapse in the same way that the Republicans let Lehman Brothers fold and that would have been/was the wrong thing to do. I feel like Labour are trying, I think the tories would try something a little less helpful.

Who pays any attention to the Opposition in the middle of a crisis?

Cameron is Britain’s GW Bush. Pretend to be moderate and compassionate to get elected , but all the time hiding his true right wing agenda. So far the ‘Green wash’ has paid off, as the Tories have recovered from their lows. However, as The Tories slowly reveal their true colours the polls turn against them.

It is quite funny to see the Tory support go up as Cameron gets attacked by Ian Dale and the Tory press. And the Tory support is going down as Dale supports Cameron’s new, more honest right wing agenda.
Also, the public clearly sees now the total failure of Bush and the rejection of the far right wing agenda in America.

The biggest asset Cameron has, is the fact that people don’t like Brown.

Maybe Sunny you’re making an invalid comparison. Perhaps it’s not the party in government v the party in opposition. Perhaps it’s a good old-fashioned left v right (unfashionable as this may be amongst the chattering classes). Voters on both sides of the Atlantic are clearly moving away from their party of the right and towards their party of the left. And why would they not?

This crisis is perceived as being triggered by big banks and people getting undeservedly rich by speculating irresponsibly. These people are widely and vociferously despised. Who do we associate such people with politically? Left or right?

People are very afraid of losing their jobs and falling into poverty. They think of the worst case and think what help and support they might get from the state – directly in terms of potential benefits, indirectly in terms of government increasing spending to replace private enterprise as it lays people off and cuts back on investment. What kind of government are they likely to think will do them most good (or least harm)? Left or right?

Pete

Pete – a good point, maybe I should have emphasised that more.

For all Cameron’s slickness, he still has a very small chunk of the Media to access. I mean, I’ve just heard Alan Sugar on BBC radio doing a blatant party political broadcast for Brown.

Isn’t it funny that leftist commentators are promoting Brown’s policies of tax cuts funded by huge debt? The very same policies they berated Bush for using.

chavscum you don’t usually manage anything more than saracatic jibes at lefties, and this is only a marginal improvement.

First, most of the press is pretty rightwing, so I’m afraid that complaint doesn’t fly. Secondly, lefties are generally keynesian economists – advocating debt during recession and surpluses during booms. Bush was the idiot who ran huge debt at a time when tax revenues were through the roof. Now please take your lame ass economics somewhere else.

advocating debt during recession and surpluses during booms

Excuse me Mr. clever Sunny but what happened to the surplus during the boom here and can I express my agreeemnt that anyone who ran up a huge debt when reciepts were flying must be an idiot .

Isn`t it nice to find some common ground

Oh silly me that was getting your Keynsian retalliation in first wasn`

Whether Republican or Labour, fiscal policy has been “Keynsian” during a recession and delusional insanity during a boom. Poor Milton Friedman doesn’t ever got a look in! Even a consistently Keynsian position would be superior to what we have now.

Newmania

To be fair, Labour did pay down a great deal of debt in their early years in powrer by running big surpluses.

I know the electorate doesn’t have much of a memory and the Tories rightly exploit that just as Labour do – but on here we should probably make the effort to recognise that the “boom” of the turn of the century saw accumulated public debt in the UK fall significantly.

@22 – we should certainly make that effort, lost cause though it is.

On the dollar thing:

1) the £ was overvalued at 2:1, and currency corrections *always* overshoot

2) the driver for counter-intuitive rise in the US$ against all currencies (not just £) was primarily due to European and Asian banks rebalancing their portfolios to reflect the $ assets they’d written off (so Bank X’s policy is for US assets to make up 25% of global portfolio; 10% of its US assets are written off; so 2.5% of global assets need shifting from €/£/Y/RMB to US$).

On the claim by Brown to have reduced borrowing that is what you might call a Brownie. At the end of the Major period and into the first Blair term we were coming our of recession and receipts rose sharply as payments dropped off . New Labour being desperate to lose their soon to be reacquired reputation for bankrupting the country were ‘signed up to Major’s spending limits ‘. In this early period the National debt reduced.
From the moment Labour have been free of Conservative restraint it has gone up year on year when it ought to have reduced further. This has been hidden in a variety of ways notably in the hilarious lass the parcel of PF I s. In this period government spending has increased by 55% or £55 billion pa in adjusted earth pounds.
Partly this has been paid for by fiscal lag and stealth taxes but also by increasing debt . These circumstances are not obscure and while readers of Liberal con may have short memories we can rest assured Brown does not . His presentation of debt is therefore an outright lie and has been revealed as such on numerous occasions notably by Frasier Nelson
It might also be worth considering that anyone with any comprehension at all of what recession does to debt would have known exactly what to expect( Not hard) .We seem to have operated a fiscal policy literally based on the assumption that there would never be a down turn again ,. But then we were told …the end of boom and bust and that the golden rule was to apply was “Over an economic cycle “ .

Now Brown is offering the once in lifetime opportunity to take out tax rebate loan to be paid back at god knows what terms after the election. You would have to be insane to take a penny from this man….well in any case its all just presentation of the debt we cannot avoid anyway suddenly deemed to be reflation thanks a gesture here and there .

Year Zero is not a Conservative concept and I know exactly who is benefiting from short memories . Idiot Brown

.

This poll wasn’t voters shifting from Conservative to Labour. There Conservatives are still where they have been for months, solidly in the low 40s. Labour have jumped from the low 30s to the mid 30s because the Liberal Democrat vote share collapsed to 12%.

This poll shows a major shift from Lib-Dem to Labour rather than from Conservative to Labour. Unfortunately for Labour low Lib-Dem scores are to be expected at the mid point in the electoral cycle, the Lib-Dems always pick up vote share as the elections get closer and people start to remember they exist. 18% is a much more likely number, like in the earlier ICM poll (who are always better at forecasting the Lib-Dems’ eventual result according to Mr Smithson) where the Labour result was a rather less impressive 30%.