Today's Daily Telegraph has its latest opinion poll well-hidden:
The YouGov poll for The Daily Telegraph has further bad news for Labour with the Conservative lead back up to double figures – enough for David Cameron, the Tory leader, to secure a narrow majority of 22 seats.
Labour are on 30 per cent to 40 per cent for the Conservatives and 17 per cent for the Liberal Democrats, a fall for Gordon Brown of one per cent since the last YouGov survey midway through December.
"Bad news"? The ConHome site, by contrast, reckons Labour up two points, Tories steady and unchanged, which it calculates as a Tory majority of 10, not the Torygraph's claimed 22. And that's an increased lead? Meanwhile, Smithson's politicalbetting site tries to equate party support to the price of petrol! Which somehow reminds Malcolm of the saying, "But what's that got to do with the price of fish?"
Meanwhile, in the shrubbery something stirs.
Martin Kettle, in the Guardian, had an end-of-year fantasy about the Great Unspeakable GNU:
In all the many articles that have already been written – and all those that will soon be written – about the possibility of a hung parliament after the 2010 general election, one significant option seems perversely unexplored – the big one: a deal between the two largest parties. That's right, between the Conservatives and Labour.
Of course, that will not happen -- if only because Labour have enough sense. But Kettle sees it in one particular context:
Wartime is different, many will say – rightly, of course. But how different? The national government reminds us that coalitions are not peculiar to wartime. A more accurate reality is that grand coalitions of the two main parties are formed when there is a perception of national emergency, whether in war or peace, in which single-party administrations seem incapable of taking necessary actions on their own.
Now consider this:
In that spirit of unity, of a greater purpose than the simple pursuit of politics, I have an announcement to make.
We have said that from day one of a future Conservative Government, a national security council, with the key ministers and defence chiefs, will sit as a war cabinet.
And I can announce today that if we win this year's election, I will invite leaders of the main opposition parties to attend the war cabinet on a regular basis so they can offer their advice and insights.
When a nation is at war, it needs to pull together.
I am determined that with a Conservative government, it will.
That's Cameron, today.
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