A quite remarkable bit of anti-Labour spin from The Sun

Understandably today’s news coverage is dominated by Thatcher’s funeral, but this piece of quite remarkable spin from The Sun shouldn’t pass without comment. This morning they reported that there had been a “sharp drop” in Labour’s poll lead over the Tories – to 7%. Whilst that’s certainly low by recent standards, I’m not sure it merits the line:

“LABOUR’S lead over the Tories has HALVED in the past week as party chief Ed Miliband has come under fire.”

That makes it sound like the % of people voting Labour has fallen significantly as a result of “Ed Miliband coming under fire”. Except that’s not actually the case. Labour currently sits on 40% with YouGov, down just 2 points since last week – and well within the margin of error.

The Tory percentage, however, is up 5 points – unsurprising as Labour has barely campaigned in the last week, whilst David Cameron has been taking to the airwaves to claim that “we’re all Thatcherites now”.

Incidentally – there doesn’t appear to have been any coverage of Labour’s 14 point lead in The Sun last wednesday – until they decided to mention it today to attack Ed Miliband.

If anyone was still labouring under the illusion that Ed Miliband and Labour might get a fair hearing from The Sun, they shouldn’t any longer…

Update: A day later, Labour’s lead is at 11 with YouGov (Lab 41 Con 30 Lib Dem 10 UKIP 12). We won’t be holding out for much coverage of this poll in The Sun.