The Devil Is In Barbados

Today's Guardian ICM poll is bad news for any Labour supporter, particularly as ICM are usually the most accurate pollster. But unless you read the detail (follow the link to pdf of "main data set") you could jump to the wrong conclusions about what Labour needs to do to dig itself out of the shit.

In the small print you get to see that Labour support is holding up relatively well amongst core groups of supporters:

- 18-24 year olds who don't bother to vote (13% lead over the Tories);
- lumpens and working class people who vote whatever way the Dirty Digger tells them to (6% lead over the Tories);
- poor people from those places up there past Watford (9% lead over the Tories).

Unfortunately our support has collapsed catastrophically amongst the "NuLabour" elements of the coalition that won us the last three General Elections and are the the modern face of the Labour Party. These are very heavily represented in battleground seats and amongst groups of voters most likely to turn out:

- Daily Mail and Daily Express readers - 19% behind;
- wrinklies - 35%;
- people with loadsa wonga from down here in the civilised part of Britain - 25% behind.

I'm pleased we are keeping our core vote happy (right) - I represent a ward full of them. But we need to start thinking in a hurry about ways to get the petit-bourgeois Daily Mail ("Hurrah For The Blackshirts") readers (centre) and City banking voters (left) back on side, otherwise we're going to be out on our Jenkins and unable to do anything at all to help ourselves become rich and famous. Privatising everything in sight, which was supposed to be Tony's big idea for the 3rd term, clearly isn't ringing anyone's bells except, perhaps, David "hug-a-hoodie" Cameron's.