Tory Own Goals
This week's MORI political poll for The Times sees the government's voting intention lead over the Conservatives widening again. The Opposition have failed to make their attacks on the government stick, and both this and other recent polls offer clues why this might be the case.
In the last couple of weeks it is clear that the Tories, and the Euro-sceptic press, have misjudged the public mood over the proposal for a European Rapid Reaction Force. It is plain that they felt that this idea could only further strengthen and intensify public feelings against the EU, yet when it came to the point, the majority of the public actually thought the proposal was a good idea (as both the MORI/Mail on Sunday and Gallup/Daily Telegraph polls showed.) Not that this should have been a surprise: MORI polls in the past have also found support for integrating armed forces, even when other European developments have been strongly opposed. This is, no doubt, partly because the Tories have failed to get the content of their argument across. For example, the MORI/Mail on Sunday poll found 51% thought British forces should not fight under a non-British commander. (Since British troops do so already on NATO or UN operations of which the Tories are generally supportive, perhaps this is an argument they prefer not pursue.) Our earlier polls found majorities supporting integrated European forces but opposing an integrated foreign policy. It seems clear that many of the Euro-sceptic public see a combined European army not as a threat to British sovereignty but a useful co-operation and perhaps a contribution to British interests by our European partners.
Take another example. A few years ago, when the then Conservative government was contemplating the privatisation of British Rail, opponents of the policy warned that it would prove to be "a poll tax on wheels" - a policy so disastrously unpopular that it might bring down a Prime Minister. In the event, it never quite came to that - John Major's government found so many other ways of destroying its credibility that an unpopular public transport policy was neither here nor there. But now, years later, the association of that policy with the Tories prevents public dissatisfaction at the state of British public transport from being fully turned on the present government, whose responsibility it now is.
The public may not be convinced that all the problems on the railways can be solved at a stroke, but the majority are clear about one step they think should be taken: 56% in an NOP poll last week for the C4 programme Powerhouse want the railways renationalised. (Such attitudes do not just arise from the present chaos - more than a year ago, after the Paddington rail crash, 73% in an ICM/Guardian poll said they would approve of the government buying back Railtrack into public ownership.) The public are, of course, critical of the management of rail services by Railtrack and the franchise holders: a Gallup poll for the Daily Telegraph at the start of November found that 54% of the public think that Railtrack is "greatly to blame" for the current rail crisis and 47% said the same about the rail operating companies. But 42% also blame the last, Conservative, government; only 15% attribute the same degree of blame to the present incumbents.
Furthermore, despite the continuing media coverage of the disruption to rail services since Hatfield and, subsequently, the storms and floods, the issue is very low on the public's political agenda. Perhaps the most surprising figure in last weekend's MORI/Times poll is that only 9% mentioned transport or public transport as one of the most important issues facing the country. If this low interest in the issue continues, it will make it easier for the government to push through its own potentially unpopular policies, the privatisation of the Air Traffic Control system and the partial privatisation of the London Underground.
According to a MORI survey earlier this month for the Greater London Authority, more than half of Londoners oppose the government's plan of a Private Public Partnership for the Tube. Furthermore, among these opponents more than twice as many say they "oppose strongly" as say they "tend to oppose", a considerably greater intensity of feeling than polls usually find on public policy issues. The views of Londoners are closely matched by the public outside the capital, too - the NOP/Powerhouse poll found 49% of the British public thought the Underground should remain in public ownership, while only 28% backed the PPP and 13% preferred full privatisation. Nor is it hard to see reasons for the public's attitudes. Almost half of Londoners in the MORI/GLA poll (47%) think that if the PPP were to be introduced, value for money for passengers would get worse; perhaps more importantly still, 42% think safety would deteriorate, and 38% that reliability would be worse. Half of Londoners now think that the Mayor should have the final say on the running of the tube, though a substantial minority, three in ten, want that final say to stay with central government. Yet widespread though this opposition is, its political impact will be muted unless the public have it high on their list of concerns. They don't at the moment, and the Tories can't easily put it there because the public associates themselves with a similar policy. In London, despite opposition to the PPP policy and despite the Mayor being a strong opponent of the policy, Labour's share of the vote in the latest poll (by ICM for today's Evening Standard) is as high as it was at the last general election.
Take a third policy, also covered by the ICM/Evening Standard poll. Four-fifths of Londoners think the Millennium Dome was a failure; surely this ought therefore to be damaging Labour? Yet while seven in ten think the present government should be blamed for the fiasco, six in ten also blame the Tories (who, certainly, had the initial idea, but passed over the rein of power to Labour long before it was too late to stop and do something else with the money).
When a government is not suffering for the unpopularity of its own decisions and policies, it is clearly in a pretty strong position for fighting an election, which is probably now only months away. Despite the brief fuel-crisis 'blip', Labour's confidence that it cannot fail to win that election must be growing daily.
