THE fall of Baghdad has given Tony Blair and Labour a big boost in the polls with a large majority of the public believing that military action was right, despite widespread looting and disorder in Iraqi cities.

A Populus poll for The Times, taken between Thursday and Saturday, shows that Labour has emerged from the war in its strongest position this year, only two and half weeks before elections for local councils in England and for the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly.

By a more than two to one margin (64 to 24 per cent), voters think that “taking military action” was the right rather than the wrong thing to do.

This is striking, as the poll was conducted when much of the news from Iraq was of the looting of shops and hospitals. Nonetheless, support for military action has remained around earlier high levels.

There was no variation between those polled on Thursday, when pictures of the fallen statue of Saddam Hussein dominated the media, and those questioned on Friday and Saturday, when the news was more negative.

After being level-pegging in February and March, Labour has leapt ahead of the Tories, particularly among younger voters. Overall, Labour has risen 7 points since early last month to 41 per cent, while the Tories have slipped back 5 points to 29 per cent.

Such a sharp movement in a single month almost certainly reflects a “Baghdad bounce”, especially as most voters say last Wednesday’s Budget made little difference to them.

This bounce is similar to what happened to the Tories under Margaret Thatcher during the Falklands conflict.

Between March and July 1982, support for the Conservatives rose by 15 points to more than 46 per cent. The party slipped back to 41 per cent, but Mrs Thatcher coasted to re-election in June 1983.

Historic parallels are never exact and the Kosovo war in 1999 made virtually no impact on the polls, while Labour suffered defeat in the European elections that June.

The Tories will see the decline to their lowest level this year as perverse in view of their strong support for military action, but they have been caught in the backwash of the immediate and, they will hope temporary, boost to Labour.

Support for the Liberal Democrats has slipped just 2 points to 22 per cent. This may reflect the party’s opposition to military action ahead of the fighting. But a much larger fall might have been expected given the broader public shift in favour of the war, and the party remains above 20 per cent and in a much stronger position than in the last Parliament.

More Lib Dem voters think that military action was the wrong thing to do (46 per cent) than the right (41 per cent).

This is in marked contrast to both Labour voters (79 per cent against 14) and Tory supporters (70 per cent against 21). These figures suggest that support for the Lib Dems is more ideologically coherent than in the past.

Roughly a quarter of people, whether defined by gender, age or social class, think that the military action is wrong. This has been the pattern both during the long build-up and during the war.

Last month, before the fighting began, the Times/Populus poll found an identical 24 per cent opposed to Britain taking part in military action regardless of whether or not there was a further United Nations resolution.

Consequently, the majority of voters who had said before the war that they could support military action only if there was such a resolution must now overwhelmingly believe that the war was right, despite the failure to agree one.

Support for military action remains lower among professionals and managers, at 58 per cent, than among various working-class groups, at above 66 per cent.

Labour has recovered support among professionals and managers, where it had been weak, and the party is doing well among those aged under 35, particularly among 18 to 24-year-olds (where its rating is 50 per cent).

There is an increasingly stark age divide in Tory support. Over the past few months, the Conservatives have been consistently running third, behind the Lib Dems, not only among 18 to 24-year-olds but also 25 to 34-year-olds.

In this poll, the Tories have also slipped to third among 35 to 44-year-olds. Tory support rises above 30 per cent only among those aged over 45 and the party’s stronghold is those aged over 65 (40 per cent of whom back them).

This is a partial reassurance for the Tories, since more than three times more people in the 65-plus age group say that they are certain to vote than among those aged 18 to 24 (70 against 20 per cent).

Populus interviewed a random sample of 1,004 adults aged over 18 by telephone on April 10 to 12. Interviews were conducted across the country and the results have been weighted to be representative of all adults.

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