Ceding ground on cuts sees Tories take poll lead

In the last week alone, the IMF, ILO, World Bank and one of the world’s leading economist Paul Krugman have warned that Europe’s embracing of austerity will damage its  economies.

Following one weekend poll, UK Polling report noted that:

“The five point Conservative lead is YouGov’s highest since October 2010 and the Labour score the lowest”.

This represents a turnaround of 16% in Yougov polls in less than one year. On 10 and 11 March 2011,  Labour had its highest poll lead of 11% after it polled at 44% and 45%. This pattern is jut as clear if one looks at the average of the daily Yougov polls to iron out day-to-day fluctuations.

The chart below shows a moving average of seven Yougov polls.

Most starkly it shows that the Tories now have their first average polls lead over Labour for 13 months, since December 2010. That this comes just one week after Labour announced its shift right wards on the economy is no coincidence.

Again this represents a significant shift from Labour’s high point in March 2011, when Labour also had its highest average poll lead of 9%. Then Labour’s poling average reached 44% and March 2011 saw the lowest scores for the Tories too.

This came at a time when the Tory economic policies – such as the VAT increase- were starting to impact on living standards and Ed Miliband was visibly opposing the Tory economic polices, even appearing on the TUC March for the Alternative.

Throughout 2011, Labour achieved an average of 42% in the Yougov polls. This was a significant improvement form the disastrous 29% it received at the 2010 general election.

Yet this average now appears to be on a downwards trend. For economic and political reasons, Labour’s new economic policies should be quickly dropped.