A new poll with a sample of 2118 people is just out from YouGov for the Economist and shows Labour moving up a notch and the Tories down a point. The fieldwork was carried out from Monday through till Wednesday and so covered the Northern Rock nationalisation.

The vote shares compared with the last YouGov poll at the weekend are CON 40% (-1): LAB 34% (+2): LD 16% (nc).

The Tories will be pleased to remain in the 40s while Labour will be encouraged that they have made a bit of progress. A 16% score for the LibDems from YouGov continues to be a good rating.

By 52% to 13% those interviewed thought that Alistair Darling was going a bad job – that’s in marked contrast to last night’s Populus poll.

Only 11% of those questioned answered “excellent or good” to the question “How would you rate the Government’s handling of Northern Rock over the past few months?”. A total of 78% rated it as “fair/poor/awful”.

As to the Tories 21% thought that they would have done better with 16% saying they would have done worse. But 59% agreed with this statement – “They are ‘playing politics’ and would probably do MUCH THE SAME as the government is now doing if they were in office”.

Can we use this thread for UK politics and the previous one for the White House Race?

Mike Smithson