Labour’s lead with YouGov has disappeared for the first time in 18 months

After a recent ICM had Labour and the Tories tied over the summer, the party’s consistent lead in the daily YouGov tracker poll has been a source of comfort – until now. For the first time since March 2012, YouGov has Labour and the Tories tied this morning on 36%.

Now when looking a polling you should always look at the trend rather than the data point, but a) the trend has been downwards for Labour over recent months and b) the media a already whipping themselves into a pre-conference frenzy over what this means for Labour and Miliband.

If we look at YouGov’s polling over recent days, Labour’s leads have been of 4,5, 3 and 4 points respectively – so it’s likely that subsequent polls will revert to the recent norm, and that this is an outlier – but it’s also a warning to Miliband and his team of how fragile Labour’s lead is.

If the plan is to play it safe and try to crawl over the electoral line, that doesn’t provide any room for manoeuvre at all. To give himself a better chance of winning, Miliband will need to be braver than that. In a few days we’ll find out how brave he is willing to be…