Labour’s wannabee leader continues to trail the Bullingdon boy

Two threads this morning both from new YouGov polls in the Daily Telegraph. The first coverered in the previous story shows a sensational rise in support for the Greens ahead of next week’s election for the Edinburgh parliament.

The second, which is the papers main lead, is from the main April survey by YouGov. The focus is on Gordon’s position in relation to Cameron in the forced choice question of whether, if people had to choose, they would go for a Brown led Labour government or a Cameron-led Tory one. The graphic above reproduced from the paper shows the results.

This is, of course, a phoney question because it ignores the Lib Dems and other possibilities. But the fact that YouGov have been asking it in this form for so long gives us a real chance to observe trends – which don’t look good for Gordon and Labour.

The main general election voting intention has some good news for Blair’s party – a significant cut in the Tory lead. The headline figures are with changes on the last survey by the pollster – CON 37% (-2): LAB 32% (+1): LD 18% (+2): OTH 14% (+1).

Although their numbers are different – the trend of a decline in Tory support and an increase in the Lib Dem position – are the same as that found by ICM on Wednesday.

What’s extraordinary is that even with the Tory lead being slashed back the Brown-Cameron position continues to get worse for the chancellor. Still we have to assume that Labour MPs know what they are doing.

In the Labour leadership betting Gordon is now at 0.11/1. In the general election “most seats” betting the Tory price continues to tighten.

Mike Smithson