Peter Kellner: The Wages of Spin

“Things can only get better”, sang enthusiastic Labour activists on the night of the party’s landslide victory back in 1997.

According to ministers and, indeed, official statistics, things mostly have got better. But that’s not the verdict of the jury that counts: the voters. They have become so fed up with Labour’s spin machine that they disbelieve virtually everything the Government says – even when it’s true.

YouGov’s large-scale poll for the Sun makes this devastatingly clear. Even after last year’s recession, average living standards are one-fifth higher than when Labour came to power – but far more people say they are worse off (44 per cent) than better off (28 per cent) than they were in 1997.

Despite smaller class sizes, better exam results and thousands of new school buildings, more people think state schools are now worse (34 per cent) rather than better (26 per cent).

Crime rates have fallen steadily over the past 12 years, yet three times as many voters think crime has gone up (49 per cent) than down (15 per cent).

In just one area does Labour win more bouquets than brickbats. Thirty-four per cent think the NHS has improved, while 31 per cent think it has got worse.  But, given the vast amounts of money spent on health, and the virtual end of long waiting lists, ministers must have hoped for far more gratitude from the electorate.

Given these figures, ministers  might be shocked, but should not be surprised, to learn that a mere 17 per cent of the electorate think Labour’s rule overall has been “good” or “excellent”, while 44 per cent say it has been “poor” or “terrible”. (Thirty-five per cent strike a middle course, saying “fair”, with Labour having done a mixture of good and bad things.)

In fact, the only real surprise is why the Tories are not heading for a landslide victory. This is because millions of swing voters have yet to decide where to place their affections. They have fallen out of love with Labour in a big way – but most have not yet fallen in love with the Conservatives.

John Humphrys: A Failed Coup – What next for Brown and Labour?

If cats are supposed to have nine lives, how many should prime ministers expect? At least three, if the experience of Gordon Brown is anything to go by. This week’s failed coup attempt against him almost certainly means the Prime Minister will survive to lead Labour into this year’s general election. But what does it say about his leadership, the attitude towards him of his cabinet colleagues and the party’s chances in that election?

The attempted coup came out of the blue, or almost. Disillusion with Mr Brown among many Labour MPs has never gone away. Hopes that he would prove himself the leader who could secure the party a fourth term in office have never materialised. Rather, the nagging belief that another leader might save many Labour MPs their seats and even prevent the Tories from coming to power has never disappeared. But not enough significant figures seemed prepared to do much about it.

James Purnell’s resignation from the cabinet last June failed to prompt others to follow his example. Single voices, such as that of Charles Clarke, the former Home Secretary, have consistently called for the Prime Minister to go or be toppled. But nothing has ever come of these now familiar calls and almost everyone, including most political commentators, had reached the conclusion that the matter was closed. It was to be up to the voters, not Labour MPs, to decide the Prime Minister’s fate.

So the coup that was mounted at lunchtime on Wednesday was a great surprise even to those who had been wanting something like this to happen for a long time. Two former cabinet ministers, Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt, wrote to their colleagues in the parliamentary Labour party to say that something had to be done.

Ostensibly, their proposal was not that Mr Brown should be got rid of but rather that the issue of whether or not he should survive should itself be got out of the way. They suggested that Labour MPs should be allowed a secret ballot on the issue next Monday. They said: “This is a clear opportunity to finally lay this matter to rest. The continued speculation and uncertainty is allowing our opponents to portray us as dispirited and disunited. It is damaging our ability to set out our strong case to the electorate. It is giving our political opponents an easy target.”

But although that was the stated aim and purpose of their move, few mistook its real design: to oust the Prime Minister. In short, it was an attempted coup.

It fizzled out almost as quickly as it was mounted. Only a few backbenchers publicly supported the plan. Many others rounded on the rebels, accusing them of taking leave of their senses (or much worse). No ministers joined the coup by resigning. By the evening Mr Hoon himself conceded that it had failed: he and Ms Hewitt had provided MPs with the opportunity to deal with the problem, he said, but they had chosen not to take it. Lord Mandelson, the deputy prime minister in all but name, said the move made by his ‘friends’, Hoon and Hewitt, had been a misjudgement because it was the ‘settled view’ of the Labour Party that Mr Brown should lead it into the election.

If the purpose of the rebels was what they said it was – to close the issue of the leadership once and for all before the election – then they have probably succeeded. But Gordon Brown is still there. So although the coup has failed it is not quite the end of the matter. For the very attempt has revealed several things and created new difficulties for the Prime Minister and his party.

In the first place, the very fact that the coup should have been attempted at all shows the depth of unhappiness with Mr Brown in the party. Both Ms Hewitt and Mr Hoon (a former chief whip, no less) are very experienced politicians. They would not have taken this risk, a risk not only with their own reputations but with the public standing of their party, had they not been convinced both that Mr Brown really did need to be got out of the way if Labour were to have any hopes in the forthcoming election, but also that a significant number of people in the party agreed with them. The fact that they failed to rally enough support to succeed does not itself contradict either point. Their opponents in other parties can now claim that Labour is a divided and unhappy party. And they are doing just that.

In addition, the coup, even though it failed, exposed the far from robust confidence in the Prime Minister on the part of his cabinet colleagues. Some came out in his support straightaway. But many took their time and when they did issue statements backing their leader those statements were widely read (and, it would seem, intendedly so) as lukewarm.

In particular, the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, regarded by many people as the most likely figure to succeed Mr Brown should he fall from power, waited six hours before committing himself, and then simply said: “I am working closely with the Prime Minister on foreign policy issues and support the re-election campaign for a Labour victory.”

It is widely believed that the rebels thought that up to six senior cabinet ministers had been ready to back them. That none of them in the end did so is perhaps because each was waiting for another to take the lead, hence the delay in their muted endorsements of Mr Brown. If that is so, then they may be accused of wishing to wound but being afraid to strike.

The fact is, though, that both the Prime Minister and the Labour Party have been wounded. For the episode has allowed the opposition parties to claim that neither is fit to govern and that a general election needs to be called as soon as possible. David Cameron, the Tory leader, argued that with the country facing so many difficulties, from the war in Afghanistan to the state of the economy and the public finances, it cannot afford to have a government at war within itself and preoccupied with the issue of who should lead it.

Mr Brown may hope that time will help and that we shall all soon have forgotten this dramatic but brief episode. Perhaps we shall all quickly become preoccupied again by the much more pressing issue of how to survive what’s turning into the coldest winter many can remember. But he knows that he does not have much time left before he faces the voters and he can be in no doubt that the events of this week have done him and his party no good at all.

What’s your view about the attempted coup? Were Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon right to mount it or not? Does their move make you think there is deep unhappiness with Gordon Brown’s leadership in the Labour Party or not? What do you make of the refusal of backbench Labour MPs and ministers to support it? Do you share the view that the slowness of many cabinet ministers to back the Prime Minister and the tepid nature of some of their endorsements exposes their disillusion with him or not? Do you think Mr Brown is now safe until the election or not? Would it make any difference to how you would vote if Labour had another leader? And do you agree or not with David Cameron that we need an election as soon as possible?

Let us know your views.

66% say whoever is Labour leader will make no difference to their vote

The first YouGov voting intention poll of the year, with a bumper sample of over 4000, shows voting intention standing at CON 40%, LAB 31%, LDEM 17%. On a uniform swing this would be a very close call between a hung Parliament and a wafer thin Conservative majority.

The poll was conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday, so immediately before Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon sparked a fresh round of leadership speculation. We also asked where people would be more likely to vote Labour if Gordon Brown remained their leader or if he was replaced. 16% of current Conservative voters and 27% of current Liberal Democrats said they would be more likely to switch to Labour if Gordon Brown was replaced (though of course, more likely is a long way short of saying they would definitely switch).

8% of people said David Miliband was the alternative leader most likely to make them vote Labour, followed by 5% for Jack Straw and 4% for Alan Johnson. 66% said whoever was Labour leader would make no difference to their vote.

John Humphrys – 2010: Year of Decision

This post is taken from my colleague John Humphrys’ YouGov blog.

It’s the time of year when pundits like to make predictions about what’s going to happen in the year ahead. Few of them get it right and economists, more than any, tend to get it wrong. No one really knows what state the British economy will be in a year from now. But of one thing we can be certain: 2010 is a year in which there will be a general election, whose result is likely to affect what happens in the economy. What electoral outcome do we want?

That question is not simply about which party we would prefer to form the next government, although that is what the parties themselves will be banging on about between now and polling day, expected in May though possibly coming as early as late March. It’s also about whether or not we want to give one party exclusive control of our government or whether we’d actually prefer parties to share power. The polls suggest we might be heading for the first hung parliament since February 1974.

Some commentators think a hung parliament is the best thing Gordon Brown can hope for. Labour, they argue, is too far behind in the polls realistically to expect to be able to form a majority government, especially as the party will have been in power for thirteen years and the ‘time-for-a change’ argument will have more traction with voters.

Nonetheless, the Prime Minister is clearly campaigning to secure a fourth outright victory for Labour. In his New Year message he said that only his party could promise a ‘decade of shared prosperity’ and the Tories risked destroying a recovery that is still fragile.

Oddly enough, David Cameron, the Tory leader, did seem to show more interest in the consequences of a hung parliament in his message. Indeed, that message was widely interpreted as an attempt to cosy up to the Liberal Democrats, with whom, he said, the Tories now had few differences. What is perhaps strange about this is that the polls still suggest that the Conservatives have a good chance of winning a majority on their own. It may be that Mr Cameron was just flying a kite and that from now on we shall hear from him the more traditional line of a party leader: that his party alone should be trusted with running the country.

As for the Liberal Democrats themselves, Nick Clegg, the party leader, accused both the other parties of merely “parroting the language of change” and made clear that he was going to fight the election on his party’s convictions rather than with any thought of which other party he’d prefer to end up in bed with.

But if a hung parliament is looking more likely than it has for years, would it be a good idea? Some people argue that it would be about as bad an outcome as can be imagined. Indeed Ken Clarke, the Tories’ shadow business secretary and who has been an MP since 1970, went so far as to say that an election result that produced a majority Labour government would be better than one that gave no single party outright power. His leader quickly disagreed with him but it may be that Mr Clarke’s memory of the February 1974 parliament (when Mr Cameron was eight years old) led him to this view.

The reason many people are so alarmed by the prospect of no party ending up with a workable majority is that they believe that, without one, the ensuing government will fail to govern. That is particularly dangerous, they say, because of our economic predicament. Although there are disagreements between the parties about when the government’s huge financial deficit should be cut down to size, everyone agrees that it will need to be done sometime. But that’s bound to involve substantial cuts in government spending. And they are very difficult to bring about, as this week’s publication of hitherto secret government documents about Mrs Thatcher’s battles on the subject back in 1979 make clear.

The problem with hung parliaments in Britain is that even if two parties make a deal to sustain a government in power, either through coalition or through less formal agreements, there is no guarantee that such a deal will last. That’s because Britain’s constitution does not impose fixed-term parliaments. It’s always up to a prime minister to call an election pretty much when he or she wants. That means that during hung parliaments all parties are likely to act more with their own impending electoral interests in mind rather than according to the national interest. That’s what happened after February 1974 when Harold Wilson ran things in a way he hoped would maximise his party’s chances in the election he subsequently called in October.

In our current predicament the danger is that the financial markets would respond to an election result that produced a minority government that they expected to carry on electioneering rather than governing by selling government bonds and taking flight from sterling.

On the other hand, advocates of coalition governments point out that in other countries they have produced stable government and the basis for economic prosperity. Lord McNally, the leader of the LibDems in the Lords, cites Germany as an example. But Germany has fixed-term parliaments, so perhaps coalitions would work here only if the parties involved found some copper-bottomed way to guarantee that their government would stay in power for several years, possibly by legislating for fixed-term parliaments.

Between now and the election it’s likely that this sort of talk will be heard only from commentators. The politicians themselves will be intent on harvesting as many votes as possible for their own parties and no doubt claiming that they alone have the policies the country needs.

What’s your view? Have you already made up your mind how you’ll vote in the 2010 election or are you still open to persuasion? What attracts you and what repels you in the cases put by the three main parties? Do you think Gordon Brown is right to say that Labour alone can promise a decade of shared prosperity? Is David Cameron correct when he says that there is no longer much separating the Tories from the Liberal Democrats? Is Nick Clegg justified in arguing that his party alone offers change? In principle, and aside from the issue of which parties might be involved, do you think a hung parliament would be a good thing or do you share Ken Clarke’s view that even a majority government formed by the party you don’t support would be better than a hung parliament? Do you think we should have fixed-term parliaments or not? And what do you think the outcome of the 2010 election will be?

Happy New Year!

PBR doesn’t go down well

Our latest poll for the Sunday Times showed a lukewarm reception for the Pre-Budget Report. Only the new tax on bankers’ bonuses was met with widescale support (79% of respondents supported it), the public were evenly split on measures like freezing public sector wages and inheritance tax allowances, with a majority opposing the increases in National Insurance and VAT. Overall 53% of people thought the Pre-Budget Report had hurt them or their family, including 32% who thought it had done so unfairly.

However, despite this our voting intention figures showed Labour gaining 4 points, cutting the Conservative lead to 9 points. The full figures were Conservative 40%, Labour 31%, Liberal Democrats 16%. So, while the PBR doesn’t appear to have gone down well, Labour’s support hasn’t suffered – or at least, it hasn’t in our polling. A survey conducted by another polling company at the same time showed Labour’s support dropping and the Conservatives lead again at 17 points.

John Humphrys: Darling’s Package – Prudence or Electioneering?

This post also appears on my colleague John Humphrys’ YouGov Blog

Chancellors of the Exchequer always have to be high wire artists. In essence their job is to balance economics and politics. But seldom can a chancellor have had a more difficult balancing act to pull off than Alistair Darling did this week. That’s because both the economic predicament the country finds itself in and the political prospects for the Labour government, facing an election in months, are so dire. The question is whether his pre-budget report, delivered on Wednesday, matched the demands of each or whether one was sacrificed for the other.

Labour’s political woes are clear enough. The party is languishing at below 30% in the polls, on average a good 10% behind the Tories. Although the gap has been narrowing a little recently, and although the party enjoys a built-in advantage in the way the voting system works, few Labour MPs are confident that they have much chance of holding power after the next election which has to be called by June.

The economic predicament is acknowledged by everyone to be dire. The chancellor announced on Wednesday that this year the economy will shrink by 4.75% — the worst year since 1921 or, in other words, a worse fall in output than in any single year during the great depression of the 1930s. Britain’s is the only major economy that was still shrinking during the third quarter of the year. The government’s finances are in a similarly dreadful state. During this financial year the government will have to borrow £178bn, or 12% of national income, the worst fiscal deficit in British peacetime history.

Mr Darling made clear what he took his task to be. It was, in the short-term, to do everything to sustain economic recovery while in the medium term to set out a credible plan for sharply reducing the government’s dependence on borrowing. He wants the annual deficit to be cut by half by 2014. So how well did his measures fit this task?

The tax rise that got the most headlines was the widely-trailed tax on bankers’ bonuses. All bonuses over £25,000 will be taxed at 50%. It’s probably the most popular tax ever introduced (except among bankers). Public outrage at banks continuing to pay huge bonuses even after many of them have had to be bailed out by the taxpayer meant that the chancellor had to do something.

But in relation to his larger task the move is largely irrelevant. The tax will raise only £550m at the most; banks may try to get round it by paying the bonuses as salary instead; and in any case the tax will be applied only for five months. So some banks may just sit it out and pay up later. Nonetheless, some in the City are squealing and warning that many bankers will up sticks and do their business elsewhere, so jeopardising future tax revenues.

On the bigger picture Mr Darling was adamant that he would do nothing to harm the fragile prospects for growth in the next year. His earlier temporary measures to boost growth, by cutting VAT and providing a stamp duty holiday on house purchases, come to an end anyway at the end of this year. So not only did he postpone his belt-tightening plans till 2011 but he said he would go ahead with his plans actually to increase public spending next year.

Cynics will note that although this was justified in terms of protecting economic growth it also suits Labour’s electoral needs: impose the pain only after the election.

And pain there will certainly be. From 2011 3.9m public sector workers will have their pay increases capped at 1% even though inflation may by then be quite a bit higher. The government’s contribution to their pensions pot will also be hit. On public spending after 2011, the chancellor said that ‘frontline services’, especially in education and health, would be protected, though no one seems to know quite what ‘frontline’ means. But he was silent on how the axe would fall on other spending departments. Independent analysts believe that areas such as housing, transport and higher education are likely to hacked by between 10% and 15%.

But perhaps the most significant delayed kosh was the announcement that national insurance contributions would increase by a 1% point (half of it previously announced) from 2011 for everyone earning over £20,000. The Tories said they would strive to avoid this. The shadow chancellor, George Osborne, said: “Now we know what Labour’s class war means – a tax on anyone earning over £20,000”. Another Tory, echoing an old Labour soundbite, said it was “a tax rise on the many not the few”.

Others attacked the move as a tax on jobs. Richard Lambert, the director general of the CBI, said: “The chancellor has made a serious mistake imposing an extra jobs tax at a time when the economic recovery will still be fragile. Increasing national insurance contributions will hold back job creation and growth.”

But if Labour’s response to our economic plight is open to criticism, what about the Tory response? Their view is that an attack on the deficit needs to be made more quickly. They argue that without a more credible plan to reduce Britain’s borrowing needs there is a real danger that the country will lose its top triple A credit rating in the financial markets with the result that interest rates will have to rise more than they would otherwise in order to persuade others to lend to us. That itself, they say, would harm growth.

For the moment the markets seem to have responded calmly to the chancellor’s package so that there is no immediate risk of Britain following the path of Greece, which earlier this week had its credit-rating cut. But some commentators think the chancellor’s projections on deficit reduction are not realistic. They are based on forecasts of modest economic growth of 1.5% next year but of 3.5% in both 2011 and 2012. In the words of one economist, these forecasts are “highly ambitious”. And the markets will remember that as recently as a year ago, Mr Darling was predicting only a 1% fall in output for this year, and eighteen months ago he was actually forecasting growth of 2.5%. The outcome will be a shrinkage of almost 5%. So the markets could soon take fright at the prospects.

That puts the Tories in the spotlight just as much as Labour. For although Mr Osborne says tougher measures need taking sooner he has been reluctant to announce yet what public spending he would cut and by how much. He is committed to protecting spending on health and overseas development but he too seems to want to wait until after the election before making clear precisely where the axe will fall.

Labour says, though, that the Tories readiness to cut spending more quickly threatens economic growth. The chancellor said: “the choice facing the country is between securing recovery and wrecking it”.

Meanwhile the Liberal Democrats’ verdict on Mr Darling’s statement was that politics was winning over economics. Their spokesman, Vince Cable, said: “What we needed was a national economic plan and what we got is an election manifesto.”

What’s your view? Do you think the chancellor’s package was directed more at Britain’s economic needs or at Labour’s electoral difficulties, or do you think he got the balance right? Do you think the tax on bankers’ bonuses is a good idea or not? Do you think he is right or not to postpone the belt-tightening measures until 2011? Do you think his specific measures – curbing public sector pay and raising national insurance contributions – are right or not? Do you think his plans for reducing the government’s borrowing needs are credible or not? How worried are you that Britain may lose its top credit rating? Are the Tories right or not to want to cut the deficit more quickly? Do you think George Osborne needs to be clearer where the Tories would cut government spending or not? Where would you cut spending? And has the chancellor’s package affected the way you intend to vote when the election comes?

Let us know your views.

Only 1 in 10 adults would intervene if they saw teenagers engaged in graffiti

As both of the major parties are putting tackling anti-social behaviour high on their list of priorities on the next election, we added a few questions to the end of a poll to discover how people to respond to direct interactions with anti-social behaviour.

69% of adult Britons claim that they would intervene if they saw an old lady being mugged. In response to the following question, 40% said they would intervene, prepared to use physical force if necessary, while 29% said they would intervene, but would not use physical force:

“You are walking down a street at 8pm. There are a few people about. You see a heavily-set man mugging an old lady. What do you think, in reality, you would be most likely to do?”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, only 1 in 4 women claim that they would be prepared to use force in this scenario, in contrast with 56% of men.

Graffiti

However, only 1 in10 respondents would intervene in any way if they saw a group of teenagers writing graffiti on a school wall. 35% said they would not even call the police after they had walked away. Older people, having walked away, were much more likely to call the police: 63% of over 55s would do this, compared with 34% of 18 to 34 year olds. This group were, however, the least likely to intervene prepared to use force (1%).

Battle Lines Are Drawn for UK Election

Our latest voting intention poll shows the parties at CON 40%(+1), LAB 27%(-2), LDEM 18%(-1). After our previous poll, which showed the Conservative lead narrowing to 10 points, it’s a return to the previous pattern. Along with a poll by ICM also published yesterday it shows the Conservatives back in a position that would give them a majority at a general election, after polls from several companies showing figures that would translate into a hung Parliament.

We also asked about some of the battle lines that that are emerging between the main parties. By focusing on their attitude towards taxes on the wealthy, bankers’ bonuses and even David Cameron’s Eton schooling, the Labour party have been trying to paint the Conservatives as the party for only the well off. Our polling suggested some public sympathy for the view: 52% agreed with the statement that the Conservatives are still the party of the rich, with 31% disagreeing. It was largely a partisan response though, 90% of Labour supporters agreed, only 14% of Conservative supporters did.

Ahead of the pre-budget report we found that the public continue to opt for public spending cuts over tax hikes, by 52% to 30%. If there are to be tax rises though, putting extra taxes on the very rich remains as popular as ever. Asked whether taxes should be spread evenly across the population, or concentrated on rich people, 66% go for the latter.

Finally we tested attitudes to the Conservative proposals to recognise marriage in the tax system, and here we found the public far more evenly divided: 48% of repondents supported the idea, 43% disagreed.

Conservatives doing better in Northern marginals

A new YouGov poll for the Telegraph shows voting intentions, with changes from our last poll, of CON 39%(-2), LAB 29%(+2), LDEM 19%(+1). A two point change in Conservative and Labour support isn’t itself significant, but it fits into a wider pattern, with recent MORI and ICM polls also showing support for Labour increasing.

On a uniform swing these figures would leave the Conservatives just short of an overall majority, but while this is a much less comfortable position for the Conservatives than a 14 point lead, in reality I expect that it would still deliver them a majority. Polling results are projected into election results using a uniform national swing, but the Conservatives could out perform this if they manage a larger swing in the key marginal seats they need to win.

The Conservatives have very few winnable marginals in Scotland, and our polling shows they are doing much worse there. But if they do worse in one place, they must be doing better elsewhere to arrive at the topline figures. Alongside our national polling, we also carried out a poll of Lab-Con marginals in the north – the 32 Labour held seats that the Conservatives would need to win to secure an overall majority. We found voting intention in those seats to be CON 42%(+8), LAB 36%(-8), LDEM 12%(-5). This is the equivalent of an 8% swing to the Conservatives, compared to a swing of 6.5% in the nationwide poll – if marginals elsewhere behave like those in the North, this would deliver an easy Conservative majority.