But it’s just one poll – ComRes for The Independent. The overall ConservativeHome Poll of Polls is still pointing to a Tory majority of 64. The fieldwork for the poll was begun after the ‘Yatchgate’ controversy had broken.
Former Tory MP Michael Brown is savage in today’s Independent about the party’s response to the economic crisis:
"The Tories should be worried if they cannot maintain substantial poll leads at the very moment voters are about to pay the price of 11 years of New Labour. But the Cameron mantra of "sharing the proceeds of economic growth between tax cuts and public spending" is redundant when the economy is in recession. However, fearful of being trapped again as the party of cuts, the Tories are frightened to spell out the obvious truth that Mr Brown’s resort to Keynesian pump-priming will be a failure. Neither Mr Cameron nor Mr Osborne has the courage to present an alternative economic policy because it is becoming obvious they do not have one."
The Conservatives do, of course, have an economic policy – based around creating the room for sustainable interest rate cuts – and yesterday we called for it to be articulated.