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Comment at end
25 June, 2008
IT’S SUMMER, GORDON – AND YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS
WATCH YOUR BACK!
Just when it seemed it couldn’t get any worse for Gordon Brown with the summer parliamentary recess beckoning and the distant hope of a reprieve for our embattled present prime minister, it has got worse.
Synopsis of the latest Guardian/ICM poll findings:
Today’s Guardian/ICM poll finds that only 19% of people who voted for Labour in 2005 think the prime minister’s personal style is an improvement on Tony Blair’s, while 67% think it is worse. Only 31% think his policies are better and 54% think that they are worse.
Only 2% say their impression of Brown has gone up, while 49% say it has gone down. A further 47% say their view has not changed. That gives Brown an overall negative score of minus 47%.
Today’s poll makes it clear that Brown is a cause of Labour’s problems as well as a victim. Polls taken before he became prime minister, including ones in the Guardian, suggested that Labour support might fall once he took over. A year on, it looks as if that warning was correct.
Today’s poll is the darkest yet for Labour in the Guardian/ICM series. It confirms the result of the Crewe and Nantwich byelection as an authentic test of public opinion, rather than a local difficulty caused by a weak campaign.
Labour’s national support, at 25%, is a record low in an ICM poll. The party has only ever fallen below 30% five times, but three of those have come in the last four months.
57% of the people who voted Labour in 2005 think the party will not win next time if Gordon Brown remains its leader. Even 38% of the people who plan to vote Labour think Brown has no chance of winning. Across all parties, 71% think Labour cannot win with Brown as leader and only 24% think he can.
In today’s poll voters were also asked whether their impressions of each of the three leaders had gone up, down or remained the same over the last year.
Even among Labour voters in 2005, only 3% now think more positively about Gordon Brown, compared with 46% who think more negatively about him.
My thoughts:
Taken alongside last week’s poll which showed that most people want Blair back as PM(!) … yes, NOW they tell us … it could be a threatening summer for Mr Brown. He may wish that he had stamped firmly on the nasty little coup plotters who had it in for Blair two summers ago instead of feeding them with more and more pointy implements as he secreted himself behind the curtain. Now those littlies have the taste for blood. And knife crime is resurgent these days. SUCH a problem.
To think, if he had confiscated the knives from the grubby hands of his cohorts, Brown would still be able to detach himself from the complete blame and get on with the financial business he was purportedly good at!
And Mr Blair would be taking the hits for what looks like an inevitable slide to defeat, notwithstanding an implosion within Tory ranks between now and the general election.
Still, as his predeccessor must be telling him in his little confidence boosting chats, two years is a long time in politics. There may yet be time to turn it round.
Well, there would have been time if Blair was in charge.
But Brown … hmm …
I’m not going to say, “I warned you …”
Oh, alright then …
I warned you.
Tags: 1. Tony Blair, 71%, cameron, coup, Gordon Brown poll, guardian icm poll, labour party, Labour will lose, opinion poll
June 27, 2008 at 4:33 am |
The forceful ousting of Blair is a great loss to the British people and their interests. Of course many were against him. But one who has history on his side is invulnerable.
June 27, 2008 at 12:55 pm |
Thanks for the comment. Very true. Blair will be seen in the long run to have been on the right side of history. Many in this country, Britain, won’t forgive him for Iraq. But they are mostly the type who would never have forgiven Churchill for WW2!
And today there has been a by-election in the former seat of the new Conservative London mayor, Boris Johnson. The Tories won it easily, and Labour, under Brown, were forced into 5th place – behind the racist British National Party!
This is not to say that Labour would have done much better under Blair. The tide seems to be turning against Labour. Although if he were still in control, he could hand it over to Brown this year (as he wanted to do) and Brown would not already be the damaged goods that he clearly now is. So Brown could have gone for an election post-Blair, saying that he, the former chancellor, knew how to sort it all out.
All bad timing, it seems.
But it’s all indicative of the fact that the economy, the worldwide credit crunch, price of fuel, mortgages, food etc are the culprits, even though largely out of control of domestic governments. People vote against, rather than for parties. And right now they are all against Brown’s party.
Meanwhile Blair makes important speeches on climate changes.
Looks like he got out just in time!
Interesting website you have there, btw.
http://kotzabasis1.blogspot.com/