Thursday, July 26, 2007

Are the wheels coming off Cameron's bike...UPDATED


As David Cameron's honeymoon as Tory Leader ends in splits and division, Prime Minister Gordon Brown's seems to be just starting...and sending Labour MPs off on their summer hols with a welcome spring in their step...

We're a long way and many events from a General Election of course.

But as Gordon said at Prime Minister's Questions yesterday, it's a good job Dave has a car following him when he cycles to Parliament - to pick up the bits that have started falling off!

UPDATE: More bad news for Dave and another boost for Gordon:

The Torygraph reports a YouGov for C4 poll which shows more than half of voters do not believe the Tory leader is in control of his own party.

Just 22 per cent of those questioned thought David Cameron was in control of the Tories, compared to 52 per cent who said he was not.

The Torygraph reports:

In stark contrast, Gordon Brown was viewed by 62 per cent of voters as being in control of the Labour Party, while just 16 per cent said he was not.
The same poll confirms that voters believe the Conservative Party itself is well to the right of Cameron.

Meanwhile Chris Grayling from Cameron's frontbench team has just been on Newsnight to try to calm things down. He admitted it hadn't been a good month for the Tories -and interestingly pointed to the self-inflicted Grammar Wars which started the bad run of luck.

Grayling bizarely compared the Brown-bounce with the last time there was a change of Prime Minister mid-term:

He pointed out that the Tories were well behind in the polls when Margaret Thatcher was ousted and that John Major enjoyed a similar bounce to Brown when he entered 10 Downing Street.

Grayling says the Major bounce only lasted four or five months before the polls settled down and the Opposition (Labour) were back in front...

What he didn't say, of course, was that a couple of years later, new Prime Minister John Major went on to win the 1992 General Election, despite the fact that Labour were well ahead in the polls.

Keep 'em coming Mr Grayling!

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