There’s more bad news for the Lib Dems in today’s papers, with a Sunday Times/YouGov poll putting the party on just 12 per cent, their lowest poll rating since October 2007. By contrast, the Tories are on 42 per cent, with Labour on an impressive 38 per cent.
Appearing on The Andrew Marr Show this morning, Chris Huhne responded to the poll results by pointing out: “I can remember a time when we had opinion polls where we were just an asterisk. We were literally within the margin of error of zero.”
A few months ago his leader spoke of replacing Labour as the second party. How the Lib Dems’ ambitions have narrowed.
New Statesman Poll of Polls
Hung parliament: Conservatives 12 seats short.
Most in the party are genuinely relaxed about their slide in the polls, explaining it away as what happens to a junior coalition partner until it has established itself in government. But unless the Lib Dems’ ratings improve, we can expect tensions to grow in the run-up to the conference season.
The risk for the Lib Dems is that they will share the blame for things that go badly and take little of the credit for things that go well. As Janet Daley writes in the Sunday Telegraph:
The electoral problem for the Lib Dems is this: however much they may genuinely support and help to facilitate these reforms, they will not get the credit for them. If the schools and welfare reorganisations succeed, it will be Michael Gove and Iain Duncan Smith who will be seen as the authors of the triumph. But if they fail, or are unpopular, the Lib Dems will share the ignominy.
For the Conservatives, the fear is that the fall in Lib Dem popularity may eventually make the coalition unworkable, and that Lib Dem MPs, fearful of losing their seats, will begin to rebel to maintain their distinctiveness. But either way, both parties should prepare for much worse once those 25 per cent cuts kick in.
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