What will be the size of the Barack boost?

One of the consequences of the recession is that newspapers are looking closely at their polling budgets. The result is that we’ve seen far fewer non-scheduled surveys.

Fortunately the regular monthly polls are so far unaffected and the next one due is Populus in the Times which hopefully will be out tomorrow night. In February the Tories were on 42 percent 14 ahead of Labour with the LDs on 18 percent.

Given the sad absence of David Cameron and the extensive coverage of Brown’s Washington visit then, on the face of it, Labour should be expecting a boost. For it’s hard to envisage more favourable circumstances for the Party.

But will this actually happen? How bad will it be if Labour are still in the 20s and the Tories in the 40s?

For Brown Central has invested a huge amount of capital in the Obama relationship and next month’s G20 meeting in London. If that fails to pull things round it is hard to see what other options the party has got.

All this features in a discussion that I’ve just recorded for tonight’s Westminster Hour on Radio 4 on the subject of the state of morale within the Labour party. It starts at 10pm.