C4 News Poll: Cable for Chancellor! (UPDATE)

I was on MoreFourNews this evening, talking about Channel Four News’ YouGov poll of marginal constituencies:

(it’s all televisual LIES by the way – the whole thing was done in green screen in ITN’s underground Danger Room. I half expected Gollum to virtually take part as the fourth guest.)

Because the poll is mainly focused on Lab-Con marginals (with a couple of Lib-Cons and three way marginals thrown into the mix), there isn’t much to comment on from a Lib Dem perspective. The main lesson is that the polls are incredibly volatile at the moment. C4’s poll last month predicted a 150 Tory majority; now it’s down to 50. If that was the situation going into a General Election, a hung parliament would very much still be on the cards.

The other lesson is that the Tories are doing really badly when it comes to public confidence in their ability to manage the economy; a complete inversion from 20 years ago. George Osborne’s ratings are atrocious. And this is a potential opening for the Lib Dems. While 15% think Darling is the best chancellor, 12% say Osborne and 19% say Cable (and among Tory supporters, Osborne only beat Cable by 28% to 20%, a damning indictment in itself in my view). If this was a nationwide poll, Cable’s rating would no doubt be even higher.

As I discussed in my CiF piece today, that isn’t translating into support for the party. It is however something to build on. We finally appear to have started moving beyond our media-imposed narrative of going through a period of implosion and uncertainty. 2008 has been a relatively gaffe-free year.

All the post-Kennedy crap is still lingering, but it is fading fast and will have almost vanished by 2010. My prediction is that with Cable lending us credibility and Clegg an unknown quality, we’re currently looking at quite a good general election. Both Ashdown in 1992 and Kennedy in 2001 managed to defy the low expectations people had of them.

Clegg still needs knocking into shape; nothing will convince me that the confusions this summer over tax didn’t lead to our autumn conference being a wasted opportunity. But if he can learn from his mistakes then I still wouldn’t rule out net gains.