THE Brown bounce is over and the deepening recession is taking its toll both on the government’s popularity and that of the prime minister, according to a Sunday Times poll.

The YouGov poll of more than 2,000 people, carried out online on Thursday and Friday, shows a sharp jump in the Conservative lead over the past month. The Tories are now on 45%, 13 points ahead of Labour’s 32%, with the Liberal Democrats on 14%.

A month ago the Tory lead had shrunk to just 6%. The latest lead, which is the biggest in a YouGov poll since early October, suggests that the rise in popularity Brown achieved for putting in place the banking rescue has been replaced by the normal slide in popularity governments suffer in recessions.

Economic fears have grown significantly, with 47% saying they feared they or a member of their close family would lose their jobs, and only 25% claiming to have no such fears. Two months ago the figures were 38% and 32% respectively.

“This surely rules out the last slight prospect of a spring 2009 election, for the circumstances that have given rise to this fear seem unlikely to disappear quickly,” said Peter Kellner of YouGov.

This is reinforced by the fact that more than nine in 10 think the economy is in a bad way. Over half of people, 52%, described the state of the economy as “very bad”, with 40% saying it was “quite bad”. David Cameron and George Osborne have regained their lead over Brown and Alistair Darling on economic competence.

A month ago, the two parties were neck and neck on who voters trusted to manage the economy. Now the Tories lead again, by seven points.

Brown is suffering even though 82% of people think the recession is a global phenomenon caused by the banking crisis and only 37% agree with Cameron’s description of this being “Gordon Brown’s recession”. But both leaders appear to be struggling to get their message across, with 39% thinking it is right to describe the Tories as a “do nothing” party.

The recession appears to be having an effect on attitudes towards business and the state, following the bailout of the banks. One strand of criticism of new Labour was that it allowed itself to be too heavily influenced by business.

In recent years Britain has been dominated by private firms, say 60% of the respondents, with only 19% believing it has been dominated by the state and 11% saying power is shared equally between business and government.

For the future, 44% would like to see power shared equally, 20% want a bigger role for the state, and only 26% would like the influence of private firms to increase. Asked whether they favoured the US or French models, with the latter having a bigger role for the state, the French approach was favoured by 29% to 20%.

However, there is concern about state intervention in people’s lives. Asked about proposals to allow public bodies to share information held on individuals, 65% said it would give the government too much power. But people do not think the government has overreached itself on environmental issues. Amid controversy over the phasing out of incandescent lightbulbs in favour of low-energy ones, people backed doing so by 57% to 37%.

Similarly, despite reports that official recycling efforts are being thwarted by an unsaleable surplus of recycled material, more than two-thirds of people, 67%, said recycling schemes were worthwhile, against just 22% who saw them as a waste of time and money.

In a generally downbeat poll, most of the optimism concerned events on the other side of the Atlantic. Asked whether Barack Obama, who will be inaugurated on Tuesday, would “usher in a new and more optimistic era for America”, 78% said it would, against only 9% who disagreed.

People believe that America’s relations with the rest of the world will improve - 69% - while 68% said that under the Obama presidency Britain’s “special relationship” with America should be close.

The poll suggests, though not by a large margin, that the new president will be expected to take a stronger lead in the Middle East.

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