TORY LEAD COLLAPSES

Peter Hitchens writes:

TORY LEAD COLLAPSES

Blow for Cameron as margin shrinks from 13% to 5% in just two weeks

I hope you all enjoyed the extra-big headline. I thought I'd put it in because this interesting development in the polls has been rather buried by the conventional media (if the BBC mentioned it at all, I never heard or saw it). Much as I welcome the sudden revival of interest in foreign affairs in the British press, a poll shift of this size surely deserves a bit more prominence, especially so soon after the heavy bombardment of headlines over Mr Cameron's former 13% lead.

It being the festival of Heathmas (the useless and dreary New Year holiday, introduced by the awful Ted Heath, which reduces the nation to inaction for nearly a fortnight after Christmas) I have so far been unable to get hold of the details of the YouGov poll published in the Sunday Times on 30th December, so I can't analyse it as thoroughly as I'd like. Even the Sunday Times itself, whose poll it was, did not headline the result on the front page or provide a pretty and colourful bar chart, but tucked the news down at the bottom of a story about Jack Straw.

Its inside account (on page seven), dwells mainly on questions about the 'state of the nation'. Many of us apparently dislike anti-social behaviour, immigration, terrorism and personal debt, it finds. More fuss is made about the personal popularity of the party leaders than about the harder and more specific question of voting intention. The story even says, weirdly, that the major parties "remain" neck and neck. Well, if a 13% lead is "neck and neck" then a carthorse could win the Derby. Whereas a 5% lead is, in terms of the outcome in Parliamentary seats if the Tories managed to hold such a lead throughout an election. The whole point is that the Tories have not "remained" where they were, and nor have Labour, and the Tories are no longer in the supposedly commanding lead recorded only a fortnight ago. In two weeks, they have slithered by eight whole points. Even given the diminished size of the true sample (see my previous posting 'How to read an opinion poll' on this subject) this is surely news, worthy of much analysis.

It won't get it, except here. Meanwhile, can everyone out there monitor BBC news programmes for the number of times the phrase "The Conservatives" is used to begin a news report, in which some statement by the Cameron Party is treated with respect? This sort of thing was unthinkable three years ago, when the Tories were lucky to get mentioned at all. They were never the subject of the sentence, unless they were embroiled in a scandal or a quarrel, and they were never referred to with respect or regard. In those days they usually used to find themselves in what is called a 'sandwich' in the broadcasting trade. The New Labour version would be set out by a government spokesman, the Tories would be given a few seconds to respond, and the reporter would then reiterate the New Labour version, attributing it to unnamed "Government sources". How I long for the money and resources to do a proper analysis of broadcasting bias.