Lord Ashcroft thinks about polling the same way I feel about my emotions: they are a snapshot, not a prediction. Even when 100 per cent accurate – which no survey professes to be – they still do not necessarily tell you what will happen in the future.
Not least because while a mid-term poll is essentially a referendum on the government, a general election is a straight choice between parties and leaders, where voters are forced to choose not their ideal prime minister, but between two or more imperfect candidates.
That is, at least, what Rishi Sunak will be telling himself today, in the wake of a pretty dire set of polls. Our Political Editor Nicholas Cecil has an exclusive Ipsos MORI survey for the Standard, which finds that 32 per cent of adults believe Sunak has what it takes to be a good prime minister.
That is not disastrous, given the last 12 months the Conservative Party has endured, from Partygate to the mini-budget and now allegations of sleaze. Rather, it is the direction of travel that will worry even Isaac Levido, the bullish Tory election strategist.
Because that 32 per cent figure is down 10 points from November. Again, hardly shocking in the context of a prolonged and painful fall in living standards and daily stories about misbehaving cabinet ministers, but portentous.
The prime minister has for months been the Tories’ not-so-secret weapon. He has polled far ahead of his party and so the crux was always going to be whether Sunak would pull his party up to his level, or if they would drag him down. We are beginning to get an answer to that question.
For info, when it comes to the state of the parties, Ipsos has:
- Labour: 51%
- Con: 26%
- Lib Dems: 9%
That is a lead of 26 points and if repeated at a general election would generate a Labour majority in the hundreds. So why is it that the main question political obsessives (and discerning newsletter subscribers) are asking, is whether this 1992 or 1997? In other words, can Sunak do a John Major and win against the odds, or are we in Labour landslide territory?
Partly this is a reflection of Labour people’s well-earned fears of losing from an apparently unassailable lead, as they did not only in 1992 but 2015. Yet Labour is performing roughly as well against the Tories as they did in 1996, a year before the landslide. The main difference is that Sunak is still significantly more popular now than Major then.
On the basis that the economy and public services are unlikely to improve dramatically in the next 18 months, and the historically reliable assumption that Tory MPs will continue to do and say boned-headed things, it is hard to see a substantial recovery.
The main hope the Conservatives have is that Labour are forced to come from so far behind, and achieve landslide swing figures simply to secure a majority of one, that a putative Starmer administration, minority or small majority, has as little fun governing as the Tories do today.
In the comment pages, Tanya Gold says trust in our politicians is too precious for MPs to have second jobs. While after Marie Kondo admitted that having children was the death of tidiness, Melanie McDonagh says: welcome, Marie, to the ranks of the chaotic.
And finally, apologies if this is a little insular and self-indulgent but... my column on Friday about spending a long holiday in Sydney (I know, poor me) went viral and the internet people got angry. Commenters accused me of hating Australia which is weird because 1. I adore the country 2. I said lots of nice things about it in the piece and 3. the main criticism was that it was too nice and its beach body-ready residents made me feel inadequate.
Obviously, occasional newsletter writer and full-time rabble rouser Robbie Smith did me no favours with the provocative headline. But it got me wondering, can it be right that so many people, some even in good faith, responded ‘wrongly’? Put another way, what’s the difference between perception and misperception? Anyway, as more regular readers of my assorted thoughts and bad takes, what do you think: is the problem me?
