As those who visit the site regularly will know I have a largish bet on the Tories recording a poll lead during September. My reasoning has always been that the new Conservative leader, which we will know on September 6th, is likely to see something of a bounce for the party in the period immediately afterwards.

I have been very much influenced by what happened to Labour in June 2007 following the departure of Tony Blair and the arrival at Number 10 of Gordon Brown. There was a significant polling move to the party which lasted until the October when, as we all recall, Brown lost his nerve about holding an early election

The Wikipedia table above shows all the published polls for the last month or so and as can be seen there has been something of a shift to Labour in the past week. Three of the last 4 polls have double-digit leads for the party while the other one from Opinium shows a marked move from what it was previously recording.

During this holiday period the Tories have been receiving an enormous amount of media coverage because of the leadership election and the likely winner Liz truss has been in the news a fair bit. The turn to Labour in the polls of the past few days is what concerns me about my bet.

Mike Smithson