Cameron is the mutts nuts but what sort of mutt?

While some bloggers are trying to wind me up by writing posts about Tories that I don’t even know I thought I would focus on the bread and butter issues in politics at the moment.

Namely, the types of dog people associate each of the National party leaders with. Apparently, many regard Chris Clegg as being most like a Chihuahua (I do love words that are spelt nothing like how they sound) whilst Gordon Brown is a St Bernard (same as the year before) whilst Prime Minister-elect David Cameron has gone from being compared to a Poodle a year ago to being a Labrador now.

There is more good news within the BPIX poll, which interviewed over 2000 people for the poll – more than some real polsters, as the poll suggests that people would rather sit next to David Cameron or Chris Clegg than Gordon Brown at a dinner party.

For those that don’t believe these stats to be important (how could you not?) the poll also (rather boringly) asked about voting intentions as well with 49% supporting the Conservatives, 26% supporting Labour and just 14% supporting the Liberal Democrats basically in line with most polls.

For this story, I doff my hat to the excellent Two Doctors blog. Here is the link to the story on the Beeb.

Labour's worst poll rating of all time

Further grim reading for the Labour Party in today’s press. Not only were they greeted with headlines such as “No way back for Wendy” and “Losing his (Gordon Brown) grip on Scotland” but the latest YouGov poll has Labour at its lowest poll rating of all time. The new poll, conducted by YouGov for the Sun Newspaper, has Labour trailing a massive 26 points behind the Tories who are on 49%. Is it all bad news for Gordon Brown? Well, apparently not as asked if voters would back Labour under a different leader, all of the suggested alternatives have a minus net reading – still safe then Gordon!

But what does the poll mean in Scotland. Well, the poll broken down by Scottish figures has Labour on 26%, the Tories on 21%, Lib Dems on 13% and the SNP on 32%. Before going further – this is the third YouGov poll since April that has the Scottish Conservatives on more than 20%. If this was the result in Scotland the next time round Labour would lose Scotland with the SNP taking 23 seats compared to Labours 21 with the Tories taking seven seats – including Alistair Darling’s Edinburgh South West – and the Lib Dems taking 8 seats – down 3 since 2005. The big winners from this latest poll are the SNP who comfortably meet their target of 20 seats whilst at the same time making a very impressive gain of 17 seats. Labour are the big losers down a whopping 20 seats since 2005 with the Tories picking up six seats of which five are from Labour – Edinburgh South, Edinburgh South West, Dumfries and Galloway, Stirling and Renfrewshire East – and one from the Liberal Democrats – Berwickshire Roxburgh and Selkirkshire.

Who are the big hitters from Labour that would lose? Other than Alistair Darling the biggest name that would lose their seat according to this poll is Des Brown. Others include Michael Connarty, Nigel Griffiths, Gavin Strang and Anne Moffat. The Liberal Democrats would also lose Danny Alexander and Shadow Shadow secretary of state for Scotland Michael Moore.

YouGov/Sunday Times Survey

I’ve just received some quite interesting results from a YouGov/Sunday Times Westminster voting intentions opinion poll which are not good news for Gordon Brown and Labour.

Some quite interesting findings, for example 47% of women are likely to vote Conservative compared to 27% who will vote Labour whilst in the male category 42% are likely to vote Conservative compared to 29% who are going to vote for Labour. When it comes to age range the results are rather positive for the Conservatives as they defeat Labour 43% to 28% in the 18-34 year olds, 39%-34% in the 35 to 54 years category whilst comfortably defeating Labour, 50% to 22%, in the over 55 category.

The region section is broken down into five areas; London, Rest of South, Midlands/Wales, North and Scotland. Of these five areas Labour only wins two – Scotland and the North but only just edge the North by 1%. As expected the Conservatives win comfortably in the South – 52% to 23%. The Party also do very well in London winning 48% to 31% whilst also crushing Labour in the Midlands/Wales area 50% to 21%. Although Labour wins the result for the sample in Scotland is quite positive for the Conservatives. This is quite consistent to recent polls which have the Conservatives between 17% and 21% in Scotland.

A rough breakdown of seats in Scotland would have Labour on around 30, the Lib Dems on ten or thereabouts, the Nats on around 15 whilst the Tories would be on 4 or so.

The poll is also quite positive regarding the performance thus far of David Cameron. Across the whole of the UK 44% of people think he is doing fairly well as Conservative leader as opposed to 26% of people who think Gordon Brown is doing fairly well as Prime Minister. Also, only 11% of people think Cameron is doing very badly compared to 28% who think Gordon Brown is doing very badly. In Scotland 43% of people think Gordon Brown is doing fairly well and 29% think he is doing fairly badly. When it comes to David Cameron 44% of Scots think he is doing fairly well with 27% thinking he is doing fairly badly with more people thinking Gordon Brown is doing very badly – 19% - than think David Cameron is doing very badly – 12%.

Labourhome doesn't let facts get in the way of a story

Through reading Tartan Heros blog this morning I stumbled across the awful Labourhome blog and this post. Basically, this rather downmarket version of Conservativehome has a go at the Nats and the Tories over this story in yesterday's Scotland on Sunday.

Its rather frothing at the mouth stuff from whoever writes this blog, take for example this line:

What this proves is that both Salmond and Cameron are completely without principle. They'd both push their grannies down the stairs if it meant they got the power they both longed for.

Dear oh dear. What nonsense. The blogger seems to neglect to mention the story concerns the fact that the dropping off the working with Tories applies to Council level.

Aaaaaaanyway, you'll probably wonder what facts I allude to the blogger ignoring.

Well, while Labour and the Fib Dems like to pedal the line that the Tories have cossied up with the SNP, the voting records of every party since May this year tell a very interesting story indeed.

To date there have been about 69 Parliamentary votes on subject matter (excluding procedural votes on business and Ministerial appointments).

In those the LibDems have:
Voted with Labour 45 times (65%)
Voted with the SNP 21 times (30%)
Voted with Conservatives 26 times (38%)

In contrast the Conservatives have:
Voted with Labour 33 times (48%)
Voted with the SNP 33 times (48%)
Voted with LibDems 26 times (38%)

On the basis of that clear evidence just where can the charge of "sell-out", "stitch-up", and "confirmation of what many of us have believed to be in place since May" be really laid?

ScottishToryBoy wonders if Lib Dem MSPs who held of the challenge of Labour candidates in May, such as Jim Tolson, would have told their constituents that only they could defeat Labour but also that they would be voting with Labour 65% of the time. Probably not eh?