Poll to Poll

Following scenes of utter chaos in the House of Commons on Wednesday as the Speaker broke precedence over which motions in relation to Israel and Gaza got debated, what, if any, impact has it had on the polls? According to YouGov’s poll for The Times out at the end of last week, Labour’s lead over the Conservatives has increased. It put Labour on 46%, up 2 points since the week before, with the Conservatives down 4 points on 20%. Opinium’s poll for The Observer meanwhile puts Labour down 1 point compared to last week on 42%, trailed by the Conservatives on 27%, unchanged compared to last week. On the substance of the issue that was of such controversy in the Commons, neither of the main party leaders seem to have performed all that well. According to the poll just 21% of the public approve of the way Rishi Sunak has responded to the hostilities in Israel and Gaza, followed by just 20% saying the same about Keir Starmer. Interestingly though whilst 56% of those planning to vote ...

There have so far been 21 by-elections in this Parliament with a 22 nd , in Rochdale, due on 29 th February. This represents the second largest number of by-elections in one Parliament, just behind the 24 held in the 1987-1992 Parliament. For political geeks such as me, the results of the first by-election in this Parliament, in Hartlepool, and the most recent, in Wellingborough (the results of which were announced hours after Kingswood), tell the story of the seismic change in the political fortunes of the two main parties.   The Hartlepool by-election took place in May 2021, just over a year into Keir Starmer’s leadership of the Labour Party. The result at the time was a disaster for Labour, with the Conservatives winning the seat for the first time in the constituency’s history. With a swing from Labour to the Conservatives of 16%, the result saw Labour’s share of the vote fall by 9% compared to the General Election, with the Conservatives seeing a massive increase of ...

There has been much excitement today about new polling by Savanta pointing to a 7 point drop in Labour’s share of the vote. Among all those questioned who said they were likely to vote and who expressed a voting intention, 41% said they would vote Labour, down five points from last week.   The Conservatives meanwhile are on 29%, up two points. Savanta notes that the 12-point lead for Labour is the lowest it has recorded for the party since June last year. The dip in Labour’s poll lead comes following the party’s decision to drop its commitment to spending £28 billion on its green investment plans.   In addition, with the poll having been conducted between the 9 th and 11 th February, it just covered part of Labour’s latest antisemitism row which began to emerge on Sunday. Not surprisingly the poll has got many excited, with an article on the GB News website declaring: “Crisis deepens for Starmer as polling PLUMMETS and now THIRD Labour politician 'spoken to' over a...

This week Labour confirmed what was looking like a near inevitability. It formally announced that its plans to spend £28 billion a year on its green investment plans would be cut to £15 billion, with just a third of it being new money.   Blaming the state of the economy under the Conservatives for the decision, Labour Leader, Sir Keir Starmer, said : “We announced the £28bn two and a half years or so ago, when interest rates were very, very low. Since then, Liz Truss crashed the economy and other damage has been done. [Interest rates] are now very, very high – interest on government debt is already tens of billions of pounds a year. We’ve always said we have to be within the fiscal rules and fiscal rules come first.” Critics on the left of the party expressed dismay at the decision, arguing that it amounted to a surrender to Conservative attacks that the £28 billion figure was simply not affordable without tax rises and more debt. Sharon Graham, General Secretary of Unite the...

That Labour has a substantial lead over the Conservatives in the polls is not exactly news. Just this week, YouGov’s latest poll gave Labour a 21 point advantage over the Conservatives. However, despite the impressive polling lead, as we look to an election, possibly in the autumn, it is difficult to understate the historic nature of any result that leads to Labour or the Conservatives securing an outright majority in the House of Commons. For the Conservatives, a recent analysis in The Times will have proven sober reading. As the first paragraph of the piece summarised: “Rishi Sunak will need to pull off the ­biggest political comeback in more than 70 years if he is to win the next election, analysis suggests.” The article, which looked at polling data going as far back as 1951, found that “no government has successfully closed such a large gap this close to a general election.” It continued: “It suggests that the best Sunak can hope for on the basis of historical trends would...