Poll points to Labour landslide

Labour poster portraying Tory leader Hague as Lady Thatcher

By Robin Oakley, CNN European Political Editor

LONDON, England (CNN) -- On the evidence of the opinion polls throughout Britain’s election campaign, Tony Blair’s New Labour government is set for re-election in another landslide victory.

The latest blow to the Conservative Opposition led by William Hague was an ICM poll conducted from May 26-28 published in the Guardian newspaper.

This measured the voting intention of electors at Labour 47 percent, Conservatives 28 percent, Liberal Democrats 17 percent and others 8 percent.

It was a double blow for the Tory opposition. The ICM poll has consistently given a lower lead to Labour than other opinion polls and the figures showed that over a week of intensive campaigning in the thick of the election Labour’s lead had increased by 6 points.

The previous ICM poll a week before had measured support at Labour 45, Conservatives 32, Liberal Democrats 17 and Others 7.

If the latest ICM figures were to be repeated in the election on June 7, the Conservatives could expect to lose more than 30 seats, reducing them to a rump of around 130 in the 659-seat Parliament.

Labour would have a majority of well over 200 seats, the biggest majority of any government since the national coalition of Ramsay Macdonald in 1931.

Opinion polls are thermometers, measuring the political temperature at the moment they are conducted. They are not barometers, forecasting movements to come.

AUDIO CNN's Robin Oakley: Conservatives backtrack over euro 660K/61.secs. AIFF or WAV sound

But there has been a 15-20 point gap in the polls between Labour and the Conservatives for most of the past four years. Only a flurry of fuel price protests in September 2000 briefly changed the picture.

No party in British history has ever come from as far behind as the Conservatives have been all this year to win an election. Labour’s opinion poll lead has scarcely dipped, despite criticisms of its handling of the foot-and-mouth outbreak, which caused Blair to delay the election from his original target date of May 3 to June 7.

The ICM poll suggests that Hague has made a crucial mistake in his election strategy. He has sought to put the focus on the issue of the European single currency, warning voters that the election is the last chance to “Save the Pound.”

Hague has suggested that the referendum Blair has promised the British people if he is re-elected and decides to recommend British entry into the Euro would be “rigged.”

But although electors oppose euro entry by a margin of 61 to 25 (with 15 percent "don’t knows"), electors seem content with Blair’s promise.

The ICM pollsters asked people which of 11 key subjects would be crucial in making up their minds how to vote: joining the euro came eleventh out of the eleven.

The top three subjects were health, crime and education, two of the three which Labour have highlighted in their campaign.

Leadership is a key question in any election and when ICM asked respondents who would make the best prime minister 45 per cent opted for Blair and only 12 per cent for Hague.

That put Hague just one point ahead of Charles Kennedy, leader of the Liberal Democrats.

Labour has deliberately put the focus on the leadership issue by producing a campaign poster superimposing the hair of former Tory leader Margaret Thatcher on the largely bald head of William Hague.

They say the significance is to suggest that Hague is harking back to the policies of bygone days which might have been appropriate then but are so no longer. But the poster also serves to contrast Hague's low ratings with the former party leader ousted in 1990.

An outcome on the lines suggested by the ICM poll would be a political cataclysm for the Conservatives and an astonishing success for Blair.

No party defending a majority of more than 100 in the British parliament has ever increased its lead and not since the 1920s has a single party had a majority of more than 200 seats.

Labour’s biggest worry as campaigning entered the final week was that of voter apathy in a predictable campaign.

Opinion pollsters have been finding only 55-65 percent of electors saying they will make the effort to vote and turnout is expected to drop to less than the 71 percent in 1997, itself the lowest figure since the 1930s.

Labour campaigners fear that some of their supporters will stay away from the polling booths because they have been alienated by the party’s efforts to woo former Conservatives with centralist, rather than socialist policies.

Others, they worry, will fail to turn out because they believe the election is such a foregone conclusion they need not bother to vote.

Blair is confident of victory. But he will not be confident of the margin of that victory until the votes are counted.