Jonathan Milne, The Sunday Times
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THE Tories have opened up a 16-point lead over Labour, their biggest in more than 20 years, a poll for this weekend’s Sunday Times has found.
YouGov put the Conservatives on 43%, compared with 27% for Labour and just 16% for Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats. Gordon Brown has now taken Labour to its lowest poll rating since 1983, when Michael Foot was the party’s leader.
If the results were repeated at a general election, Cameron would lead his party to a Commons majority of around 120.
The poll also shows Alistair Darling’s budget has failed to go down well with voters — the Tories significantly are ahead on economic competence.
The findings follow an upbeat speech on family policy by Cameron today in which he told an audience of Tories “We’ve made people feel good about our party again”.
But he warned against complacency and told his followers that they should beware sticking too rigidly to the traditional Tory emphasis on the two-parent family, arguing it “doesn’t reflect the realities.”
Cameron, speaking to the Conservative Spring Forum in Gateshead, said family policies should give support to single parents as much as to traditional couples.
“The modern Conservative Party is the party of families, and we need to support them all”, he said.
Cameron added: “There are single parents, divorced parents, widows – all working hard to keep their families together, to keep their children on track,” he told the gathering.
Cameron also used his speech to acknowledge the level of suspicion of politicians, saying the public believe they “lie and spin”. He said MPs should lose their “cushy” final-salary pension scheme as well as the right to set their own pay.
The majority off Cameron’s speech, however, was designed to set out his family policies. He accepted it was best for children to be brought up in a two-parent family, but this should not be the party’s only priority.
He warned traditionalists that the party had to be in tune with contemporary society. “Let’s be honest with ourselves — there have been some on the right who have got families wrong too, suggesting that the only thing that matters is family structure, and the only thing parents need government to do is get out of the way,” he said. “Well I’m sorry, that simply doesn’t reflect the realities of bringing up a child.”
Cameron’s speech represented a shift from his position a year ago, when he blamed much of the increase in gun crime on the breakdown of traditional household structures and promised more support for two–parent families.
Cameron proposed today to support families by protecting children from “ruthless marketers and shameless retailers” who irresponsibily targeted children as alcohol consumers, and from sex and violence in the media.
He said parents had been right to protest at the positioning of chocolate by checkouts in shops and to demand that Woolworths withdraw a child’s bed with the provocative name Lolita. He said there should be higher taxes on alcoholic drinks popular with teenagers, and that liquor licences should be cancelled for problem premises.
Cameron said he would increase the number of health visitors by 4,200, with a £200m “universal health visiting service” funded by scrapping plans for more outreach workers for SureStart family centres.
This would make it possible for every mother to receive 29 hours of visits before their child’s first birthday, he suggested. SureStart was a good scheme, but health visitors would reach more families than the outreach workers.
He accused ministers of allowing the number of health visitors — who see patients and new mothers at home — to go into “freefall” over the last three years, with numbers dropping by 10% to just 9,000 full-time posts.
The Conservative leader also told his members that it was time to clean up “our broken politics”, and their party had been part of the problem.
It was his first conference speech since the Derek Conway affair, which has prompted fresh scrutiny of MPs’ spending on family members and expenses.
“Let’s be clear what they [members of the public] think of us: ‘You lie and you spin, you fiddle your expenses and you break your promises’. This isn’t a ‘mood’. It cuts deep. And we have to respond,” he said.
“Let’s not pretend that we’re outsiders to Westminster, come to clean things up. We’ve been part of the problem and we need to sort it out from within.”
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When Cameron finaly gets into power he needs to tell the country the real state of the economy, he needs to come clean on everything this shower has done and make it public.
preddo53, leeds, UK
Dont all politicians say the same thing? Maybe they introduce "improvements" in new areas, however whats the guarantee on the areas they do not mention? What if those areas are working well for the system at the moment but how do you know if a new governments policy changes the existing one and changes it for the worst??? Its like gambling.
J, leic, U.K.
The current political scenario has all the hallmarks of the late 1970s.
The UK in a Labour induced financial meltdown, Jim Callaghan returning from abroad announcing '..crisis, what crisis...', whilst the streets were full of uncleared rubbish, deceased people being left unburied across the country, and the major Unions demanding excessive salary increases to pay for the heavy increases in income tax and household bills. Sound familiar!!.
Then in the 1979 General Election Labour were booted from office, and Mrs T elected as PM. She faced the same problems that Cameron will inherit at the next General Election.
I just hope he is up to it.
The next election is there to be won, only Cameron himself can lose it, by following McBroons policy of excessively taxing hard working families to pay for all the expensive half baked schemes introduced by this government.
Pip, Banstead, Surrey
I'm sorry, but this poll is an aberation - from 6% a coupleof weeksago to 27% - Yougov have just got it wrong!
Ron Smith, Bristol,
Mr Brown will get the blame for the situation he has inherited from the Blair years; 10 years of sleaze to try and recover, impossible without a change of government. Mr Cameron needs to undo all the that the blairs have done to destroy this country.
Richard Irwin, Bristol, UK
Remember The Labour Patry Conferencejust 6 months ago?Mr Brown looked invincible,what happened?
stephen hulton, eure, france
I genuinely feel despair that 27% of respondents still support this puritanical and incompetent government.
I suspect we will lose many millions to emigration in the coming years to Canada, Australia NZ and the US.
Since 1997 they have taken an axe to our hard won civil liberties, made us a target for terrorism, shut down social mobility and increased the public debt to such an absurd extent that there is a real danger that debt may have to be refinanced with a considerable risk premium.
Add to this a fast declining income from North Sea hydrocarbons, the imminent decline of our financial service sector and personal debt at absurd levels we are staring into the abyss of an economic depression.
There is going little left to hang around for.
John, Reigate, Surrey
Anil in Manchester, as a single bloke I resent the idea of having to subsidise married couples. You already get Child Benefit for your sprogs regardless of your income. If truth be known, most single childless people are not smoking, texting and eating burgers, but working hard yet completely priced out of housing, whilst paying for the education of other people's offspring. Reintroducing a married person's allowance would be an excellent reason for not voting Tory.
Paul, Coventry,
I dont want a sneering Tory Toff to lead the country, but Labour has to stop being so PC and acknowledge that a traditional family set up is most likely to produce children who attain educational, emotional and lifelong success and happiness.
sk, East Sussex,
If Mr Cameron would like to turn the screw a little more , how about asking ( what with the abundance of rain we have at the moment and reservoirs full to the brim ) . How his proposed planning for new reservoir's is coming along and indeed the actual construction of said reservoir's .
Saving for a rainy day both financially and meteorologically seem's to pass this government by.
Mr Cameron please feel free to put this point on PMQ's on wednesday.
Nick Dixon, Sutton Coldfield, England
Its a good job that Gordon doesn't read the polls he might fret
mitch, Wolverhampton, England
The Labor Party is in the political dog house because it runs the UK economy in the same totally incompetent way as the Bush administration runs America's. Out of control borrowing and spending is against the core interests of Labor's working and middle class voter base.
That said I doubt the Conservatives would govern any differently. The days of the major political parties on either side of the pond actually believing in anything except winning the news cycle and raking in campaign contributions are long.
MARK KLEIN, M.D., OAKLAND, CA
Mr Cameron, if you are serious about "family values" then please restore married couples' allowance to us poor saps who are married and working to keep our spouses at home to look after the children properly.
Many people today have a partner who is not using up their Tax Free Allowance, but the other partner is paying more and more, presumably to keep housing single mothers and pay them to keep breeding and claiming more and more Child Benefit, Income Support, Council Tax Benefit etc, etc etc.
Come on Mr Cameron, it is the likes of us who will vote for you, not the latter who, if truth be known, are too busy smoking, texting and eating burgers to vote for anyone.
Anil Chatterjee, Manchester,
It wouldn't make a scrap of difference if there was a change of government. The government, meaning Gordon Brown, has driven Britain into deep debt and whoever is prime minister of chancellor the debts have to be paid with increasing taxation. the country is also paying for the regeneration of the countries from the old soviet union and Vladimir probably has a wry smile now and again, not often, when he thinks of all the dosh which Russia now has, and all the US dollars which China has, and Britain in debt, and the USA with a debt of about 18 trillion dollars. But, are we bovvered, nah ! Don't hold your breath on the Tories lowering taxes, remember Cameron in one of his lucid moments admitted to being an admirer of our former Dear Leader. god help us !
Phil de Buquet, Newport, England
Single parent families tend not to reflect reality either. If a woman is subsidised by the state then she is not living in a world of truth, which is that she cannot bring up her child with her own resources.
Widows, unless they happen to have murdered their husbands, are not in their situation by choice. Other single mothers are there by either their own choice or the father's choice.
Malcolm McLean, Bradford, UK
A Yougov poll is pure fiction. When was the last time any reader filled in a poll truthfully. Pollsters feed the media with ready to go articles. The newspaper then publish this fiction as a news story. Its called placing a product. Yougov and their ilk must surely be be paying handsomely for this national exposure. Either that or Murdoch owns shares in these worthless companies. Stories like this should be clearly labelled adverts for the benefit of the more simple minded reader .
sid, derby,
Running scared too David? Until the country starts to have some respect for relationships again we will continue to have an ever increasing trail of damaged, anxious paranoid kids who fail in large quantities. The parents of these kids, ( largely from single parent families), will make a fuss if they are ignored but perhaps they should have thought about the problems that their inept parenting causes before they had their children. If they read this comment, they'll all start shouting but I work with young children in a Primary school and I know that the children of a lot of single parents are the most disadvantaged, confused and unsuccessful because I see it daily.
judy, Liverpool, England
I cannot stand Cameron but I like Brown even less
Pete, Beverley, Humberside
The probelm is that Labour is finally, in a freudian way, admitting its failure and the public has finally noticed.
Education has failed - now the only ideas left to Labour are how to damage middle class kids education to maintain fairness.
The Health service kills more people than road accidents do - and its harder to see your well paid GP than it was when they were paid less.
And to all this the very well paid Ed Balls says "So What ? " as taxes rise with fuel, utilities and food at over 200% the rate of the government fictional inflation rate.
The wonder should be that Labour are polling as high as 27%!
Man in a Shed, Woking, England
If this is all David Cameron has to say on the current state of affairs in the UK, then it is clear he is not fit to be the Leader of the Opposition. Is he not aware of the economic state of the country, the appalling mess the NHS is in - to say nothing of education. He also seems to be oblivious of the fact, that the sovereignty of this country is being given away - but perhaps that means nothing to him - or The Conservative Party.
Jean Jackson, Louth, Lincs.