Poll on Miliband

After his speech Ed Miliband took to the airwaves to explain what he meant by One Nation Labour. Whatever the explanation it would seem that his speech did the trick. That’s according to the latest YouGov poll for the Sun.

The poll has the state of the parties as CON 31%, LAB 45%, LDEM 10%, UKIP 7%. Stretching the lead to 14%. But you’d  expect  Labour to have a bounce after the oxygen of publicity that a conference generates..

Of much more interest to Labour Party strategist is what that speech did for the image of the leader itself.

Apparently YouGov repeated a bank of questions about Miliband before and after his speech. To Miliband’s great relief they show a positive change in the way the great unwashed viewed him. 

The percentage of people who think he has made it clear what he stands for is up 12 points from 24% to 36% (49% think he has still not made it clear). I’m not sure that the post speech interviews will have made a dent in the 49%. As they say there was a lot of noise but not much light. Dissembling was the order of the day when it came to talk about future cuts. 

There are slightly more voters that think that he’s up to the job of Prime Minister.  On that he’s up 6 points. Before the conference 25% thought he could do the job now it’s 31%. There are still an awful lot of people that don’t think he’s up to it (47%). 

As for being a strong leader, only a slight change, up three points from 16% to 19%.Miliband will be comforted that it’s still in the right direction.

A question as  to who would make the best PM, shows Cameron still in the lead. But Miliband has closed the gap. 31% think Cameron would be the best, 27% think Ed Miliband would be the better choice. 

But of some worry to Labour strategists is that an awful lot of Labour voters have reservations about whether young Miliband would be the best PM. Still only 64% of Labour voters say so.

What it shows is that it's possible for Ed to make a fist of things with the public. But it’s very much work in progress. There's still a lot of scepticism out there. But the speech moved things in the right direction. 

But it is still a fact that its governments that loose elections and all an Opposition can do his exploit government cock ups. The mess up over the west coast rail franchise debacle is an excellent example of government ineptitude. This is the kind of open goal that Opposition's exploit. 

Next week’s conference will be the last in the series. I shall be basking in the Tuscan Autumn sunshine so this blog will take a weeks break.