How will the increasing crisis play in the polls?

Back in September, in what now looks to have been a completely different political era, one of the great surprises was how the early stage of the Northern Rock crisis seemed to have no impact in the polls. In fact when specific questions were put polling respondents did not blame Gordon or Labour.

It was the moment when I started to believe that Brown could really walk on water and I opened a significant buy position on the party on the commons seats spread markets.

How different it all looks this afternoon after the company rejected the offers to buy it and the government saying that “there is no certainty that any bidder for the Rock will have access to £24bn of emergency loans after February.” Shares in the firm are down 16%.

All sorts of questions now arise. Was the Chancellor right to guarantee the deposits of all savers in Northern Rock? What about the emergency financing? Should NR be nationalised as is being urged by LD acting leader, Vince Cable?

Most of all how much is all this going to cost the taxpayer?

We should not have to wait too long to find out how the voters are responding. There are at least four polls in the pipeline.

My current big betting position is a Labour sell.

Mike Smithson