Latest poll has the gap down to 4 points

The latest Brown bounce opinion poll appears on the front page of this morning's Times which reports that

Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling are favoured over David Cameron and George Osborne by 40 per cent to 31 per cent — a six-point jump in their lead since the Pre-Budget Report was presented on November 24.

The populus poll has the Tories on 39 points,Labour on 35 and the Lib Dems on 17 and its the narrowest lead in a Populus poll since March

Populus Poll suggests public aren't so sure about the governemnt's tactics over recession

This morning's Times carries a one off populus poll that suggests that the public are not quite as behing the government's reflationary package as some might think.

According to the paper

Since the last Populus poll on November 7 to 9, Mr Brown has dropped sharply as the best leader “right now, to deal with Britain’s economy in recession”, from 52 to 42 per cent, with a big fall among the middle classes. But he is still ahead of David Cameron, on 36 per cent, up four points. Mr Cameron is still ahead, by 41 to 33 per cent, as the preferred leader to take Britain forward after the next election.

and Peter Riddle suggests that

the public remain unsure about why the economy has deteriorated so quickly, as well as about whether the Government’s response will work.

How debt will take over the political landscape

A timely leader in the Times this morning,if you will excuse the pun.

As the government is poised to take Bradford and Bingley into public ownership,it argues that The issue of debt will now dominate political debate

It argues on two fronts,firstly that

by getting a poor return on its public spending, the Government has avoidably taken public finances into the red. From its recent low of 29.6 per cent in 2002, debt as a proportion of GDP has risen steadily. In August of this year it stood at 43.3 per cent. This parlous financial position is a direct political legacy. A government of genuine prudence might have put money in the bank at the top of the cycle to pay the bills at the bottom. But it would then have been unable to argue that the Conservative plans to cut taxes would require cuts in public spending. The dividing line of investment versus cuts - on which the Government has fought the last two elections - does not work if there are funds in the bank.

and secondly

an expansion based on excessive household credit has gone predictably awry. At the same time as the public finances have been deteriorating, household debt has been rising. The value of Britain's personal debt - £1.35 trillion - is now greater than the value of its gross domestic product. The main reason, of course, is that a house in Britain is not a home: it is an investment. The ratio of household debt to post-tax income is now three times greater than 25 years ago.

A change of heart?

A number of commentators are quite puzzled over the subject of this morning's editorial in the Times written by its new chief leader writer Danny Finkelstein.

The piece entitled The Conservatives: vision needed suggests that the party should not just rely on Labour's failings to get into power but produced some policies of its own.

(a wit in the comments section has said that they should wait 2 weeks before the election in case the Labour party steal them)

It is unclear as yet what real choices the Conservatives will offer voters on tax, healthcare and the environment, or whether Mr Cameron can galvanise Tory activists to make his rebranding of the party more than that, to the point that it represents Middle England as new Labour did by 1997. He has not done so yet.

According though to James Forsyth

today’s leader seems to go against what Danny was arguing just a fortnight ago. Then, he wrote that the “party that is first to let the voters know what it really stands for... loses”, and urged David Cameron to resist the lure of being seen as “distinctive”.

A change of heart? But it would be nice to see exactly what the Tory policy is