More polling disasters

I’ve been spending a bit of time recently wondering just how bad for Labour the election is likely to be.  Conventional wisdom still holds that the Tories have a psephological and electoral mountain to climb, even Cameron said that – a while ago admittedly – and it remains the case that they are hampered by systemic electoral bias.  But I have become increasingly convinced that they are on course for a big majority, possibly a very big one.

For a start, this feels like one of Jim Callaghan’s tidal moments in political history.  The budget looks like being an abject disaster – not only was there the totemic increase in the top-rate of tax, thereby breaking (another) manifesto commitment and winning the scorn of Tony Blair, but it also lacked any route out of the fiscal slough into which Labour have driven us: it was, as I said, fundamentally unserious and seemingly designed solely for petty party political positioning.

And then there are the polls.  The Evening Standard has a London only poll that ought to make shattering reading for Labour.  The headline figures are

Con: 45
Lab: 33
LD: 16

When I first saw this poll I thought it might be reasonable for Labour – after all they’ve been scoring in the mid 20s for the last few.  But when you compare the figures from the last election (Con: 32; Lab: 39; LD: 22) you begin to see that this is all starting to look seismically awful for Labour.