Sir Michael: Let's never forget who put us all in the brown-stuff? It was Labour's financial mismanagement.. Labour's disastrous immigration policy and Labour's endless foreign wars.. Sir Micheal if the Scottish Labour party can't even win in Scotland how the f**k are they going to win in England. Even a f**king idiots such as yourself most fully understand that... So what did the Scottish Labour party do for the English working-class? Answers on a postcard.. PS! Yes we did have riots... led by criminal gangs which Labour supported, which damaged Labour's standing with hard working and law-abiding voters, these very same voters may hate the tories, but they don't trust Labour. You really do need to shake your head boy!!

Seems a very high proportion of 'other' - does that include the don't knows?

It's probably just a fluke poll... it's not the only one since Foxgate, there's been two, the other one showed Ed's lead down to 3%. Let's wait a little longer before jumping on bandwagons...

theres another 4 years until the election so it's far to early to take these figures seriously as we have said different polls show different ratings.

It doesn't matter who is in power the crisis is far worse than anything any party could have predicted and our hands are tied with the IMF. Hate to say this but Labour has no credible plans and I can't believe a word they say let alone trust them with the economy, hell I can't even trust the coalition but at least we're barely surviving now. Under Labour we would've sunk with more borrowing!

Time for Ramsey MacDonald to put in an appearance eh swatantra nandanwar? And that was at a time when Labour at least pretended to be a socialist party.

This is good news, so long as Labour doesn't take it as such. When in this situation, Labour should campaign as if they are 5-3 points behind, losing, but with the chance that with a hard fight they could win

The only poll i`m interested in will be in 2015?, these useless polls are all cosmetic!, next week they`ll tell us Flashman and Gideon are the most trusted humans on the planet!, and the tories have surged into a 20 point lead!!, they mean nothing, they`re done for cause and effect!, by the time 2015 comes most of us will have been screwed and shafted good style!, thanks to the incompetent duo of Flashman and Gideon, with the help and collaboration of the Limp Dems!, no matter what the right wing toilet papers say about Miliband, the electorate will duly give the Nasty Tories and the Collaborators their due reward!!, that`s the only poll that counts!.

As for popularity ratings, people keep brandishing this Kinnock factor as proof, but how reliable is it? The polls that you say put labour ahead of the Tories in 1992 proved unreliable and just plain wrong, they were pointing to a slim Labour majority and there was in fact a huge Tory majority. This happened because the polls at that time were not as reliable as they are now.
Also Thatcher was unpopular with a great many people and this did not stop her getting elected.
One other thing, we do not elect a president in this country we elect a political party to run government.

The smaller labour lead in the YouGov poll is down to the way they now weight their data, they are doing it differently which will show a smaller Labour lead and of course this will show up in the ratings for Ed as a political leader too.

I believe that Labour will win the next election despite Cameron's gerrymandering of the boundaries and parliament. I think the polls are not picking up the growing resentment against the Tories and the 1% "Haves". I also think pollsters and many journalists and presenters (as well as the Tories) are consistently underestimating Ed Miliband, the "Ed effect" is there and it is growing.

Make no mistake Labour will be our government after the next election.

"... there was in fact a huge Tory majority"

Major had a majority of 21 seats at first. With by-election losses, this majority decreased over time.

the trouble for cameron is that though he won the argument on spending cuts, he then embraced them with too much enthusiasm, as well as embarking on a load of lunatic policies like the nhs bill. so though people were glad to get rid of labour what seems to be happening now is that the perception that cameron is more competent is disappearing.

i think labour will end up winning because the perception is growing that though labour were bad the tories are even worse.

which is nothing like the sort of endorsement a government needs. but then thats cameron's problem, he didn't win, and yet he has behaved as if he had a massive victory. it has only been 18 months since labour lost very badly, and the tory vote is going downwards, whereas the only way they could win next time is if it went upwards, but they are doing nothing to make that happen, the opposite really.

strange behaviour, though i have often joked about cameron being bonkers i am beginning to wonder if i might be right.

who cares? It should be more but not with ED at the helm and the only poll that counts is the one in 2015.

The point is Ed Milliband is not complacent about this polls. he is just doing the Job , 2015 has got sometime and he should be working towards developing his policy that will make him a more focus leader than this bunch of buffoons whose policies has no magnitude and no direction.Ed stay calm be your own man and work harder , you will get there

We are borrowing more and growing less under the coalition

One reason Labour are behind in the popularity stakes may be because they don't appear to have any policies yet. Until they complete their policy review and announce carefully costed alternatives to coalition policies, they're effectively giving the coalition a free ride.

All Labour need now is David Miliband as leader and then the coalition will get worried.

Daniel Labour will lose the next election. A right-wing conservative government will win a full working majority. The Liberals will disappear up their own arseholes. The Scot's will foolishly vote for full independence' and Labour will never again form another government in England..

If it came to crunch Scots would oppose independence - not all SNP voters want independence.

@Sir Michael

The Tories are not without their own problem. They are losing support among women voters; there are great dissention among Tory grassroots denouncing their man's reluctance to have an referendum on the EU; many of their members are defecting to UKIP; and they are not exactly popular among the more traditional wing of their own Party. Meanwhile, their failure to promote growth is slowly eroding the public's confidence in their ability to run the Nation's economy and we are not even into the 2nd year of their term in office yet.

Too early to call, I would conclude.

The economy was recovering under Brown, don't forget but was immediately bashed on the head by Osborne's irresponsible mini-budget. Labour of course, should have cracked down on the banks' triumphalism about 2002 or when 125% mortgages were being offered but can you imagine the hue & cry from the right-wing press if they had 'interfered' with the 'market' like that? Ed & Ed must come up with a convincing plan to take the banks on & shut down the tax havens we control.

Let's be grateful that Ed has not been such a complete electoral liability that many of his detractors thought he might be.

This can partly be explained by the fact that the voters have become a very cynical lot these days. The decline in the power of the Tory Press is also partly as a result of this utter cynicism withing the electorate. They have reaped what they have sown. The Coalition Gov't is also presiding over one of the most shameful and bare faced cheek financial restructuring jobs history in order to placate and save their mates in the City.

Never in the field of human economic history have so few so consistently ripped off so many and gotten away with it.