Are Labour's Economic Policies Making Their Lead Soft?

Are Labour's Economic Policies Making Their Lead Soft?

A new poll conducted by Lord Ashcroft today suggests Labours current lead in the polls is very soft. The general public have said they don’t trust Labour with the Economy and more than half of the 8,103 voters who were polled said they do not believe that Labour has learnt the right lessons from what went wrong when they were in office.  The poll goes also says that 4 out of 10 voters who have switched to Labour since 2010 fear that if in 2015 a Labour government was elected that they would “spend and borrow more than the country could afford.”  However in better news for Labour many of those polled who voted for a different party said they would now vote Labour believing they would reverse the cuts. These findings support what I said in my last blog that people don’t see Labour as offering a credible alternative on the economy.

In easier reading for Labour supporters the poll also found that nearly 50% of people who are considering voting Labour are moving away from the Conservatives.  One in ten people asked were considering voting Labour and more than half of these people are former Liberal Democrats.  A quarter of people who have switched to Labour since the last election have not made up their minds yet and may well go back to supporting the party they supported at the last election.  This is good news for the Lib Dems as two thirds of Labours new found supporters are former Liberal Democrats with 24% being former Conservatives.  In terrible news for Labour the poll said “Many of those who would vote Labour in an election tomorrow said they would have to reassess their voting intentions if there were a real economic recovery in which their living standards improved.”  It looks like the economy is going decide the winner of the next election as most of you had probably already guessed.  However in an attempt to show that Labour is economically competent Jim Murphy Labour’s defence spokesman and leading Blairite is expected so say that Labour can’t commit to reversing any of the governments defence cuts and that he even supports some of them.   In conclusion it does seem that Labours current lead in the polls is soft and that the public still don’t trust Labour to have the required discipline to make the tough economic choices. But if other senior Labour politicians start making similar noises to Jim Murphy in public and can come up with a credible alternative economic plan their lead could harden which would make things look particularly dull for the Conservatives.  (The Poll mentioned in this Blog was a poll of 8,103 Adults between 18 and 28 and it was conducted in October)