Well, the Labour lead has definitely narrowed in the wake of the Tory conference... latest polls show:
YouGov (Channel 4 News) Lab 40, Con 36, LD 13
Populus (The Times) Lab 39, Con 36, LD 15
ICM (Guardian) Lab 38, Con 38, LD 16
Of course, 24 hours after they were saying an election was inevitable, all the papers, news sites, etc will now be saying that Brown will decide to call the whole thing off. If I were him I would still go for it, because it's more of a risk to hang on into next year. What about if the Brown 'bounce' disappears and he's facing a poll deficit during the whole of 2008 and 2009? He'll look like a right banana.
The way I see it, these polls are showing the absolute maximum popularity of the Conservatives, before any Labour counter-attack - just like the polls last weekend were showing the maximum popularity of Labour. In an election campaign the parties would no doubt settle down at a Labour lead of around 6 or 7 per cent. I can't actually remember an election campaign making a major difference to the relative popularity of the parties in my lifetime - people often cite 1992, but the actual problem there was that all the polls were way out of line because people didn't want to admit they'd vote Tory. A correction factor has been put into polling to control for this ever since and subsequent campaigns have been much more accurate.
I think Brown would be mental to call off now - he'll go into public folklore as a "bottler" and this could do him real damage in the long run. More later this week on why the Labour lead has narrowed - I don't think Dave's speech was good enough to do it by itself. Guardian Unlimited suggests that it was the announcement that the Inheritance Tax threshold would rise to £1 million under the Tories that produced the swing. If that's the case then IHT has taken on a political importance out of all proportion to the money it raises for the Exchequer. Maybe the Daily Express is gonna set the agenda for this election - which is very bad news. My view is that taxing inheritances is actually a lot more justifiable than taxing earned income, but more on that once we get into the campaign. If we get into the campaign...
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Continuing our conversation from below, it seems to me that the problem Brown faces is not just winning an autumn election but winning it big, or at least no smaller than his current majority. Any diminution of his majority will count as a Tory, or to be precise, a 'Dave' win.
I'm no expert but I doubt that one single item is enough to swing that sort of change in the polls so I suspect that it is the general perception that 'Dave' will cut tax (at last!) rather than raise it - of course he won't but the electorate won't find that out until it is too late!
Also, immigration has now impinged on the general population rather than just the big cities and even tough talk on the subject will get you somewhere in the polls, although 'Dave' will soon find out that talking and doing are very different verbs!
Latest news from the BBC (well, Nick Robinson) seems to be that Brown has decided not to go for it... the bottler.
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