The latest opinion polls

A warning to Conservative supporters this morning; don't be too cheered by the latest opinion polls in today's News of the World and Sunday Telegraph. Although they show a steady Conservative lead in the polls and personal leads for David Cameron over Gordon Brown and for the Conservatives over Labour on economic competence, the boost in the Lib Dem vote may be more significant. Because of the way that the electoral system "works", the Conservatives need to win by around 10-12% of the popular vote in order to win a general election and their recent gains have been more at the expense of Lib Dem votes than Labour. The Labour vote has so far held up remarkably well considering that the truth about their "economic competence" is slowly but surely leaking into the mainstream consciousness; but for how long will this continue.

We do know that there is at least one person who will be blissfully ignorant of these polls and that person is of course Gordon Brown who we know never pays any attention to opinion polls - which must be news to Deborah Mattinson!