More Bad News for Ed?

 Ed Miliband has been the butt of criticism from Conservatises and their press poodles. Too young, lightweight, not up to the job, go the jibes. Not to mention "Wallace and Grommit" (not sure which he's meant to be the eccentric inventor or the genius dog).

But Ed is having, if not the last laught, at least a quiet smile to himself as the ToryDem government ploughs into problem after problem.

An Ipsos/Mori poll for Reuters News Agency has; 

Labour at 43% (up 4), 
Conservatives at 33% (down 5) 
Lib dems at 13%. 

That's a ten point lead for Labour. And, as the poll was conducted before this week's GDP data showed a dramatically shrinking economy, pessimism could now be even worse than shown in the survey's findings.

If this is bad news for a weak leader, I'm sure that Ed would welcome more of the same.....

Labour Soars Ahead in Poll

Labour is the only party that can take any encouragement from the latest TNS poll on voting intentions in Scotland in the Herald.

Top line figures for the constituency vote are;

Labour 49% (up 7% since August)

SNP 33% (up 1%)

Tory 9% (down 3%)

Lib Dem 7% (down 5%)

The Lib Dems and the Tories must obviously be worried about the collapse in their support to almost derisory levels.  Seven and nine percent respectively are almost unthinkable levels of support for parties that have ambitions to be "national" parties in a Scottish context.

Nor can the SNP take any comfort from these results. Their support is roughly the same as it was in 2007. The article doesn't say so explicitly, but I suspect that, on these figures, the SNP looks set to lose seats in the Scottish Parliament, while Labour would gain substantially.

That would make Labour comfortably the largest party, and a vote of of around 40-50% would give Labour a strong mandate to govern as a minority or make them the overwhelmingly dominant party in any coalition.