Initial Impact Of Premiership Relaunch

No, the arrival of Fabio Capello hasn't resulted in Alex Ferguson and Arsène Wenger getting together to restructure the celebrity division of British football. Actually, the headline comes from today's Times which reports that Gordon Brown has suffered a triple blow today in his attempt to relaunch his premiership, with the first Populus poll of 2008 revealing a big slide in his leadership ratings, a new report attacking the way that Labour has handled medical training and yet more reports of Peter Hain failing to declare large donations towards his deputy leadership bid.

Populus reports that David Cameron has overtaken Gordon Brown on the issue of the leadership qualities required to be Prime Minister. Six months ago, just after entering No. 10, Brown was ahead of Cameron by 56% to 32% on this measure. Now, the Tory leader is ahead by 44% to 40% per cent. Brown's leadership index has also dropped sharply since June, to well below that of Cameron and to a depth only once breached by The Former Great Leader. What makes all this worse is that the election of Nick Clegg as LibDem leader has given the yellow peril a three-point boost to 19%, entirely at the expense of the Tories with Labour's share of the poll remaining almost unchanged. This puts the main parties back to where they were a year ago, before Gordon's "honeymoon" period. To summarise the situation - Labour is doing dreadfully, but relatively better than it would have been doing if the Tories weren't suffering at the hands of the LibDems.

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So, pretty good news there, then. Good enough to make Labour the largest party in the Commons. If my maths is right.