The main impact of the energy cap issue will be to firm up the LAB vote rather than attract switchers
It is now 4 weeks since Miliband raised the energy price freeze and amazingly it's dominated the political narrative ever since
— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) October 23, 2013
6-0 job to Miliband, ably assisted by Bercow #pmqs
— James Chapman (Mail) (@jameschappers) October 23, 2013
As the Tweets above suggest Dave had a pretty hard time of it at PMQs while Ed’s confidence continues to grow.
It is exactly four weeks since Ed made his conference speech and still Cameron hasn’t been able to find a response on energy prices that resonates. Today his attempts to portray Miliband as a “con-man” brought rebukes from the less than PM-friendly John Bercow.
But while Ed might be getting better media reviews and be benefitting from a more positive media narrative LAB’s position in the voting intention polls remains broadly unchanged.
His “big idea” doesn’t seem to have attracted converts but, as the chart above shows, it has led to a big switch in the way LAB voters are seeing him. Given there was always a suggest that the Labour vote was soft then that’s positive for the red team.
There’s still a long way to go to May 2015 and the energy cap issue will cease to resonate at some stage.
Mike Smithson
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