Dead Parrot?

The latest opinion poll to be published – by BPIX for today’s Mail on Sunday – shows the Conservative party 23 points ahead of Labour. To the extent that it gives the Tories a commanding lead, it echoes most recent polls. It must be a deeply depressing piece of research from a Labour party perspective and is almost scarily encouraging for the Conservatives.

The poll uses a large sample of 2,385 respondents. According to politicalbetting.com, fieldwork was conducted online for BPIX by YouGov. Certainly, its conclusions mirror recent findings in YouGov branded polls, but there is also a degree of consistency with polls published by ICM, ComRes and Populus.

Bad news for Labour, certainly, and, if anything, even worse news personally for Gordon Brown, whose own approval ratings are almost laughably low. But arguably the poll’s most interesting finding is an astonishing slump in support for the Liberal Democrats, whose share is down to 14 per cent. This will undoubtedly cause raised eyebrows; politicalbetting.com points out that it is 7 per cent below what ICM last reported and 4 per cent below YouGov.

However, the BPIX findings on Lib Dem support should not be lightly dismissed. The poll follows close on the heels of the Crewe and Nantwich by-election, the principal significance of which was that disaffected Labour voters, for the first time in a by-election for 30 years, switched directly to the Conservatives and eschewed the Lib Dems, who in recent years had become the established repository for protest votes. The failure of the Lib Dems to profit from Labour’s unpopularity, and the success of the Conservatives in doing so, is one of the principal reasons that Crewe and Nantwich may be considered to mark a sea change in national politics.

If the BPIX findings were reproduced at a general election, Lib Dem representation in the Commons would be reduced to just 15 seats. They would be wiped out in many parts of the country, including their traditional heartland of the south-west. In Wales, they would hold only one seat, Cardiff Central.

The last three general elections, coinciding as they have with relatively low levels of support for the Conservative party, have seen the Lib Dems performing remarkably well. In 1997, 2001 and 2005, they won 46, 52 and 62 seats respectively.

However, when the Conservatives were doing well, in 1983, 1987 and 1992, the Lib Dems and their predecessors, the Liberal – SDP alliance, won significantly fewer seats: just 23, 22 and 20. And in 1979, when Margaret Thatcher won her first general election, the Liberals took only 11 seats.

Of course, in terms of reflecting Lib Dem support, this may indeed prove to be a rogue poll. On the other hand, it may reflect a generational shift in political sentiment and a return to former levels of support for the Lib Dems and their predecessors.

So keep a close eye on the next batch of opinion polls. It will be interesting to see whether they also suggest that the Lib Dem dove is indeed entering a downward spiral.