Poll monitor: More woes for Labour

Labour may have fallen from grace but they are drifting downwards rather than collapsing in the polls, says BBC Political Research editor David Cowling.

The latest Gallup poll (Daily Telegraph, 9 June) records a formidable set of negatives for the government that seems a painfully fitting end to a troubled week for the Prime Minister.

Labour's monthly aggregate voting support (based on surveys throughout May amounting to 4,000 respondents) is down 2%.

Prime Minister Tony Blair's personal rating is down 4%, approval of the government's record to date down 4.8%, and the rating of the government's economic competence down 4.4%.

This completes a month when all the published polls showed a decline in Labour's position.

Downward drift

Unwelcome as they undoubtedly are for the government, this apparent fall from grace is not a collapse but a drift downwards that becomes more dangerous each month it continues.

David Cowling: Polls are fitting end to bad week for Labour

Just as with the two previous polls (ICM and MORI), Labour's problems do not result in any great advantage for the Conservatives.

While Mr Blair's personal approval rating has fallen to 46.6% in Gallup, Tory leader William Hague's stands at 17.5%.

Whereas Gallup's monthly aggregate poll shows a 2% improvement in Conservative voting intention, the resulting 32.5% is barely 1% above their disastrous share of the vote in the general election over three years ago.

Indeed, the smaller (1,000-strong sample) most recent Gallup snapshot poll (fieldwork finishing on 6 June) actually puts Labour up 2% on the previous month (at 49%) and the Conservatives down 1% on 30%.

Euro progress

Earlier this week, Channel 4's Power House programme broadcast the findings of a poll they had commissioned from NOP (fieldwork 2-4 June) that investigated attitudes toward the euro.

The monthly ICM question, asking how respondents would vote if a referendum on joining the euro were held tomorrow, regularly records about 60% of respondents who say they would vote against.

However, NOP found more complex responses in their more detailed question.

Offering four statements from which respondents were invited to choose one, they found 9% wanting to join the euro as soon as possible, compared with 23% who said Britain should never join.

But the largest single group - some 41% - said we should join the euro at some point although the conditions were not yet right.

The final group (22% of the sample) said that joining could cause problems and we should rule out membership for the next few years.

On the basis of these findings, public opinion seems more evenly balanced on the issue of Britain's membership of the euro than the political debate of recent months would suggest.