Tory despair as Labour hold strong
By Ian Dunt
Tory election strategists will be frantically trying to re-establish a robust lead today after two polls suggested Britain was heading towards a hung parliament.
An overnight YouGov poll put the Tories on 39% and Labour on 33%, giving the opposition a slim lead of six points.
As the first polling to emerge since the bullying row broke out, it suggests Gordon Brown has escaped from the controversy unscathed.
The results suggest the row went the same way as that over Mr Brown’s misspelling of a soldier’s name in a condolence letter to his bereaved mother. That row, instigated by the Sun newspaper, flipped on its head and saw the PM win sympathetic support across the country.
The bullying row may similarly have been interpreted by many voters as a sign of a strong leader and inadvertently played into Labour’s hands.
A separate ICM poll for the Guardian also confirms long term trends, with the Tories down three points on 37% and Labour up one point since last month on 30%.
If replicated at a general election, the results would see no overall parliamentary majority.
The ‘Brown’s death tax’ campaign run by the Conservatives appears to have backfired spectacularly, with Labour leading the Tories by eight points as the party with the best policy on elderly care.
The two are equivalent on handling the economy – the first time the Tory lead on the subject has been hammered down to Labour’s level.
