Seldom has the cliché proved so true: a week really is a long time in politics. The series of Daily Telegraph disclosures over MPs’ allowances has transformed the political landscape. YouGov’s latest poll, for the Sun, is the first to be conducted since the Telegraph reported on the allowance claims of leading MPs from all the major parties. It can be compared with last week’s poll for the Sunday Times, which was largely conducted before the first Telegraph story on this issue.
Since last week:
- Labour’s support has fallen five points, from 27% to 22%, when people are asked how they would vote in a general election. This is the lowest support recorded by Labour in any poll since the birth of polling in Britain in the 1930s.
- The Conservatives have slipped by two points (from 43% to 41%) in the general election voting question – but their support in the coming elections to the European Parliament has fallen by a massive nine points, from 37% to 28%, among those certain to vote.
- Labour has slipped from 22% to 19% on the European voting question, which means that the combined support for the two main parties has dropped in one week from 59% to 47%.
- The big gainers are UKIP, up from 7% to 19%. Last week I said that UKIP were likely to lose seats in the European parliament next month. Such a prediction now looks distinctly unsafe!
- The Greens are also up slightly, from 4 to 6%. But the BNP has NOT benefited from the haemorrhage of support from the main parties. In fact they are down one point this week to 3% – half the support they need to win any seats in the European Parliament.
These are remarkable shifts; and our questions on the issue of MPs’ allowances reveal the depth of public anger. Fully 60% think that ‘most MPs have been deliberately abusing the allowances system and ripping us all off’.
Has the political landscape changed permanently, or will normal service soon be resumed? In the past, when attitudes and party loyalties have changed so rapidly, it has normally proved to be short-lived. Examples have been surprise wins for the Liberal Democrats – or the Liberals before them – in widely publicised by-elections. In September 2003, for example, they jumped from 18 to 30% nationally after winning Brent East from Labour. A fortnight later they were back down to 22%.
However, projecting today’s figures to the European Parliament elections in three weeks time is extremely hazardous. UKIP could slide back – or make further advances. It depends on whether the current mood of hostility to the main parties persists at its present level, or subsides as the attention of the media moves on, as it surely must at some point, to other issues.
