This week's U-turn by the Conservatives on tax has at last opened up a clear policy gap between the parties on one of the central issues in any election: the Tories are now committed to reducing the tax burden, even if this means cuts in public spending, while Labour will pursue its public spending plans, even if this means increasing taxes. This, of course, now frees the Tories for an all-out attack on tax increases under Labour without being scuppered by the reply that the figures in their own alternative do not add up.
If Tony Blair wants to win endorsement in a referendum for taking Britain into the single European Currency, he is going to have to change a lot of people's minds. It is still possible, but attitudes against the Euro are hardening and the hurdle is becoming steadily higher. Three recent MORI surveys (for The Times, the News of the World and Schroder Salomon Smith Barney) have explored the scale of the task facing him, and some of the factors that will work for and against him.
This month's sharp drop in the government's and Tony Blair's own approval ratings [June's Times poll] restores the political scene in Britain to what we generally assume to be its normal state, after more than three years when it seemed as if the laws of gravity had been suspended. For most of the half-century in which opinion polls have been measuring the state of the parties and ratings of the governments and their leaders, it has been a constant that governments are unpopular; for the first time, Mr Blair's ratings are beginning to be comparable to those of his predecessors.
It is reported in the press this week that Conservative leader William Hague's latest initiative to win votes from the government is a meeting with a leader of the American religious Right, exploring the possibility of making a religion-based appeal for votes at the next election.
Two polls published on successive days this week - by MORI in the Sunday Telegraph [ROYAL FAMILY POLL] and ICM in the Guardian [Rising indifference to Royal Family] - seemed to suggest very different attitudes to the future of the monarchy and the Royal Family. In fact, their findings are far from contradictory, and although there are certainly some danger signs within them for the Royal Family they are by no means as bad as the Guardian's dramatic "SUPPORT FOR ROYAL FAMILY FALLS TO NEW LOW" headline might suggest.
