We get bombarded by opinion polls and such these days. Retail sales, house prices and how much the Tories are going to win the election by are the current staple fare of the polling organisations. If it really were so easy to predict the future though, we’d all be cleaning up at the bookies. On the three themes above I’m never all that clear on what’s happening. No sooner are house prices stabilising than they’re going down again, thus sending the Daily Mail readership into blind panic and reaching for their fiery crosses. Retail sales are either down by a long way, flat or buoyant depending on which day it is. The one constant in recent months has been that David Cameron is heading for number 10 Downing Street.
The only variable is how much he’s going to win by.
Maybe it’s because I live in a part of the country where the Tories flit between oblivion and being the fourth choice of the electorate, but I have never been wholly convinced of the UK’s appetite for a move further rightwards.
The Labour government has involved this country in an illegal foreign war, an intractable and bloody foreign conflict and has presided over a recession (not directly caused by them but not helped by their policies either). In recent weeks it has been embroiled in infighting, the PM has been labelled a bully and his own chancellor made a quite astonishing attack on “number 10″ only a few days ago.
And yet today the headline Gordon Brown on course to win election adorns the Sunday Times albeit if you read it, without an overall majority. This could of course be a wake up call to that paper’s readership. Or it could be that the Tories have realised they don’t WANT to win power at this stage.
It’s just one hell of a surprising headline to read no matter the reasons.
Stand by for a fall in house prices on the news!
Filed under: Politics Tagged: | david cameron, gordon brown, opinion polls
I certainly think this is an election to lose as far as the long term interests of the tories are concerned (I think we’ll see the IMF coming in within 6 months of the election), but I also think that the Tories, having cruised for 2 years, are coming up against the full might of the Labour machine, and being found wanting.
Someone in the Spectator likened it to the Tories fighting by Queensberry rules and being punched repeatedly below the belt!
I’m not convinced that it’s over (Angus Reid, who have a very respectable track record, still have the Tories with a 12 point lead and Harris have 9 points, and all the polling suggests that the Tories are doing about 4.5 points better in the marginals where it matters) but I certainly think Cameron and co need to raise their game PDQ.