Quite a lot of the debt is just being transferred to a plethora of other institutions.

e.g. proposals on tuition fees – debt transferred to the next generation of students,
borrowing eased for local authorities- debt will be services by council-tax payers,
and of course, poor people with reduced support from benefits will be more dependent on loan sharks.

Lol, Sunny. Labour are on 37%. The Lib Dems PLUS the Tories = 45%.

But both coalition parties knew the cuts would be unpopular, so it’s no surprise Labour, as the only other alternative, get credit for opposing them even if they haven’t proposed an actual alternative.

Labour jumps ahead in coalition poll ? Good. I may not be a Labour supporter but this coalition gives me a distinct feeling of pukyness and shame for having voted Lib-Dem.

The aggregate figure for the coalition could only be meaningful if they had an electoral pact which so far they have disavowed. Were they to announce such a pact then the Labour figure would undoubtedly increase at the expense of the Lib-Dems. It is also conceivable that a significant number of right-wing Tory voters might vote for one of the fringe parties such as UKIP.

@ 4

Unlikely as the tories are developing an unhealthy regard for Europe in general. One of their MEPs named Hannan is writing all sorts of anti EU stuff on this subject.

Having met a number of UKIP candidates and supporters, all should be ignored as they’re only dysfunctional tories who have absolutely no understanding of EU issues other than their in-house budget.

“Another ropey headline” was my first thought, after all CON+LIB is 45% v 37% for LAB, but if you bung the numbers into the Electoral Calculus predictor you do get a LAB majority of 24, so in that sense they are ahead.

The amazing thing for me is that 37% will vote Labour but only 24% back Miliband/Johnson on the economy. That’s a third of their own supporters that don’t back them. That’s a big problem and a clear sign that Labour need to get their economic policy sorted. People are clearly willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

BPIX doesn’t reveal its polling methodology and is therefore treated with some suspicion by the likes of Mike Smithson. That said in the past their results have been similar to YouGov (which actually carries out their polling for them).

Mark:

“The amazing thing for me is that 37% will vote Labour but only 24% back Miliband/Johnson on the economy.”

From a total of 67%, though – the economy figures are clearly given from a chart which includes “other, don’t know, won’t say”, whereas the headline voting intention figures are (admittedly with a high implied share for others) intended to sum to 100%.

@oldpolitics

If that was the case would you not expect to see a similar effect on the Cameron/Osborne side.

Typically these questions go broadly down party lines, which is why it’s so surprising to see such a drop between Labour and Miliband/Johnson. Cameron/Osborne take nearly all of the 45% of CON/LIB voters. It’s a shame BPIX don’t release their full tables because I’d like to see how the responses break down.

For me the numbers seem to show that Conservative voters are happy their party is going down the right road on the economy and that a number of Labour voters, whilst being against the route being taken by the government, are not entirely certain their party is right either.

Saying that though, if they can poll 37% when their own supporters aren’t sure about their economic policy then just imagine what they’ll be polling when their supports are convinced.

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That foreign aid question is depressing. What do people hate it so much?

BPIX are not a very reliable polster – and the association of voting intention with the other questions might have lead people’s responses – something good polsters don’t do.

But even with that taken into account, and with this perhaps therfore being an outlier result – it is worth noting no ammount of response leading was likely to show labour ahead three months ago.

So it is marginally indicvative – if not very useful

blanco,

I would not be too smug this early in the game, the impact of the cuts plus VAT rises is yet to be seen. A number of these indicators can and most likely will fall further.

The poll results to date come in spite of a a concerrted right wing media effort to demonize the worst effected by the cuts plus anyone who dared oppose them. These polemics, (benefit scroungers, bureaucratic fat cats etc. as well as the CSR, and including a public approval of Rupert Murdoch and the Gang of 35, have already been shown the IFS,DECC, Government statistics, charities and others to be based more on ideology, predjudice and fiction than facts.

Yes the UK has a problem with the current defecit.

But to deny that banking bailouts, quantitatve easing and other cash outflows coupled with lost revenue from a significant decline in GDP and employment engendered by the recession, among other factors, (for example the rise of China and India as global competitors), is not putting your head in the sand, as Osborne stated, it is putting it up your backside.

Further, history shows that It is a myth that you can cut your way to growth. A temporary repreive for the coalition on the bond market is unsustainable if the economy falters. And, speaking of alternatives, the letter published by the gang of 35 offered only the bravado chest thumping that the provate sector is capable of taking up the slack resulting from the cutbacks. No plan, no action, just talk.

They may as well have written a collective letter to Santa!

@ 13

labour have yet to come up with their equivalent of the CSR ?

No point in using hysterical data from what is purely an historical background, we live in different times and conditions. Note “yesterday is history, today is fact, tomorrow’s a mystery”

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Oooh… I’ve never had that before.

On a completely unrelated note, this would be nice news but, alas, BPIX is not perhaps the greatest polling organisation under the sun.

Labour jumps ahead by saying little or as the leader nothing at all, I suspect when he opens his mouth to tell us he will keep the Tory cuts if he gets elected, they might end up down next to the liberals.

As has already been pointed out , BPIX is a fairly ramshackle-looking outfit. It isn’t a member of the British Polling Council, so there’s no obligation to publish tables and the website appears to be designed by an eight year-old who got bored after an hour: http://bpix.co.uk/ [to be fair there's a bit more up since this afternoon, so maybe Daddy's called her in from the garden].

The BPIX figures are also odd because they imply 18% of the population are voting for other parties – about twice the usual amount. It is however too small a percentage to include non-voters and those voting for minor parties.

Luckily there are two more, shall we say, experienced pollsters around with results over this weekend. YouGov (Sunday Times) are showing: Con 41%; Lab 40%; LD 10%. ICM (NoW) give Con 40%; Lab 36% LD 16%. I know LibCon mentioned only the BPIX poll because you take every word of the Mail as gospel, but I wonder if there could be something about that poll that the other two don’t have?

To be serious, there is as usual a lot of useful information in the detail of the polls. To pick one example Osborne only leads Johnson by 38% to 28% as best Chancellor (ICM) despite Johnson being there about 3 minutes (hence 34% don’t knows) which shows the political weakness of Osborne.

@ 11

“That foreign aid question is depressing. What do people hate it so much?”

‘Cos charity starts at home, innit? If you can express it as a cliche, it must be true. I agree that I’m saddened that 80% of Brits would apparently rather spend money on shooting foreigners than feeding them.