Is “Do Nothing” doing nothing for Labour?
PB poll suggests that Brown needs new rhetoric
After the assertion here on Friday that a PoliticsHome poll on “Gord saying sorry” was leading the site’s editor, Freddie Sayers, offered PB the chance of its own exclusive polling question.
In keeping with the theme the chosen subject area was the repeated use of the term “do nothing” by Labour to describe the Tory stance on the banking crisis and the general economic situation. We only had a very short time to draft something and quickly came up with this:
“For the last five months the government has attempted to portray the Conservative party’s approach to the recession as one of ‘doing nothing’. Do you think that ministers should:
‘Continue in the hope that the more it is repeated the more the message is likely to get through’
OR ‘Develop a fresh way to attack Conservative positions'”.
Well I’ve just had the figures from Freddie and overall 12% of those polled thought ministers should continue with 33% saying a fresh line of attack should be used.
Conservative supporters were not very interested in the question at all with 70% saying “neither” or “don’t know”. Those that had a view split 5% for continuing and 26% for finding something fresh. Like all polling the numbers have been rounded.
Amongst Labour supporters a total of 64% had a view with 21% saying the “do nothing” attacks should continue but 43% wanting the party to find a different approach.
The split amongst Lib Dem supporters was “continue” 17% with 39% saying that a new approach was required.
What does all this mean? On the general issue about leading questions I have to concede to Freddie that it is hard drafting a question that is neutral – though I think that our stab at it was better than PH’s “say sorry” one that started this.
The Labour responses are perhaps the most interesting and suggest that even they are getting tired of the line and want ministers to deploy other forms of attack.
