Ed Miliband and the Creme de Menthe problem

Responsible pollsters and seasoned poll-watchers have a rule: never take one poll too seriously if it shows a sudden change. Always look at the trends emerging from a succession of polls.

Our poll-watcher, Don Brind, is away for a couple of days so in his absence I’ve been checking the latest polls myself and, well, forgive me for breaking the golden rule, but aren’t this week’s new polls trying to tell us something?

Each of three polls released in the past 24 hours – by Ashcroft, YouGov and Populus – shows the Tories up by either two or three percentage points when it comes to voting intentions in the coming general election. (Details at foot of column.) Labour’s share remains stable in all three.

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Also, the two ‘alternative’ or ‘protest’ parties, Ukip and the Greens, have both slipped. Ukip is down one point in all three polls. The Greens are down three in the Ashcroft poll and down one according to YouGov and Populus.

Doesn’t this all point to more voters beginning to see the election as a simple choice between two potential prime ministers, Cameron and Miliband? And if that's the way it has to be... well, it had better be Cameron.

This time next week, of course, the parties might be back to where they were in the polls: this might be an aberration. But doesn’t your gut tell you something might be changing?

My gut is tickled not just by the poll results but also by the findings from two focus groups conducted last week in Ramsgate and Bury where, as Lord Ashcroft writes, the “qualities” of Cameron and Miliband were a critical factor.

In a nutshell, “several people in our groups, including some who voted Labour in 2010, said the Labour leader was the single biggest barrier to their taking the party seriously.”

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We should not take too much account of the language quoted by Ashcroft because much of it will have been fed to the participants in the form of questions. Still, the general response can hardly make for happy reading at Labour HQ.

Though some felt Miliband was “genuine” and “really does care”, Ashcroft reports, the downside was that he “couldn’t lead a procession” and “doesn’t seem to have confidence in his own beliefs”.

As previous groups had noticed, writes Ashcroft, Miliband seems always to be “on about the National Health”, though participants were not always convinced by Labour’s attempts to blame problems in the NHS on the Tories. The coalition had not introduced the idea of privatisation: “Labour did it with the buildings and the Tories carried it on”.

The focus groups’ two main reservations about Labour were, apparently, that “they would go back to how they were before – spend, spend, spend”, and Ed Miliband himself – “he just waffles… he stops me getting into Labour.”

But here’s the killer. Ashcroft asked respondents: if each leader were a beverage, what beverage would they be? (Last time he put one of these questions, it was ‘What animal?’)

Nigel Farage, predictably, would be a pint of bitter. David Cameron would be a good red wine, a gin and tonic, or James Bond’s Vesper martini (surely he doesn’t come across as that suave?).

Nick Clegg would be a Babycham, or perhaps a Woo-Woo, which – Ashcroft helpfully points out - is a cocktail comprising vodka, peach schnapps and cranberry.

And Miliband? Crème de Menthe - “the sort of drink nobody would order”. Or a non-alcoholic beer. “Or a Bloody Mary. Actually no, just a tomato juice.”

Can Team Miliband really laugh these things off? I wonder.

The three new polls in detail:

Ashcroft: Con 34 (up 3), Lab 31 (unchanged), Lib Dems 9 (up 1), Ukip 14 (down 1), Greens 6 (down 3), SNP 4 (u/c).

YouGov: Con 34 (up 2), Lab 33 (u/c), Lib Dems 7 (u/c), Ukip 14 (down 1), Greens 7 (down 1).

Populus: Con 33 (up 2), Lab 34 (u/c), Lib Dems 8 (u/c), Ukip 15 (down 1), Others 10 (down 1).