Labour’s deficit in the cuts “blame game” tracker drops to just 4 points
At one stage the gap was 30%
One of the non-voting trackers that I’ve been monitoring closely since the coalition was formed in May 2010 has been the above one from YouGov on who is to blame for the cuts.
For nearly four years whenever this question has beens asked at least twice a months and every poll has found the last LAB government getting the blame sometimes by big margins.
In the early days the proportion of those blaming LAB almost touched 50% with fewer than 20% blaming the coalition. That has been narrowing and the latest YouGov finding has the margin down to just 4 points – the lowest it has ever been.
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This suggests that the “blame the last Labour government ” rhetoric, that we hear so often, is losing its potency.
As I’ve argued consistently over the past four years the perception over who is to blame was highly damaging to Labour and could threaten it’s general election chances.
We’ve seen it so often. Whenever the coalition comes under attack from Labour on economic matters Cameron/Osborne/Clegg almost always resort to chucking it back by referring to the “mess that we inherited”.
If this approach is now being believed less by voters then it is going to make the Tory challenge that much harder.