Decisive Labour lead

As the nasty party showed its true colours again yesterday, following a blatant ad hominem attack of Labour leader Ed Miliband, polls show that the public will always choose substance over theatrics.

 
Yesterday (April 9) the tables turned, with three polls showing Labour to be decisively ahead just four weeks away from the general election on May 7.

 
Breaking the prior neck-and-neck tie with the Tories, Labour has pulled ahead by several points, with a Panelbase poll putting Labour ahead by six points, a Survation poll by four and a TNS poll by three points.

 
The Survation poll for the Daily Mirror also found that more people approved of Miliband’s job as Labour leader as compared to prime minister David Cameron’s.

 
The surveys were conducted just before the Tories unleashed personal assaults on Miliband yesterday (April 9), as defence secretary Michael Fallon launched a vicious attack on the Labour leader, calling into question his character.

 
Fallon claimed that Miliband “stabbed his own brother in the back” to become Labour leader and would now be “willing to stab the UK in the back” on defence.

 
The Tories refused to apologise or back down from Fallon’s mudslinging, with Cameron, chancellor George Osborne and work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith all standing by Fallon’s statements.

 
Even the strongly conservative Telegraph denounced Fallon’s comments, calling them “ill-judged”, and noting:

 
“Mr Fallon’s comments were more an ad hominem attack on Mr Miliband and his leadership qualities than a serious critique of Labour’s defence policy.”

 
“Our politicians need to put the mud-slinging aside and engage in a much more grown-up debate…,”the Telegraph concluded.

 
Unite political director Jennie Formby said the polls were reflective of a growing and unstoppable national mood.

 
“Three polls are showing today that the Labour party is truly the party of the people,” she said. “These polls reflect what we here at Unite have been saying for some time – the electorate is hungry for a substantial change in government, one that offers real alternatives to the crisis working people have endured for the past five years.

 
“In only the last week, Labour have unleashed concrete policies that will make a real difference to the lives of working people – a clampdown on zero hours contracts, scrapping employment tribunal fees and putting an end to a 200-year-old tax loophole that enables the wealthiest to skirt their duty to contribute to society,” she added.

 
Indeed, polls show that the electorate has embraced such policies. On abolishing the non-dom tax loophole, the vast majority, almost 60 per cent, were in favour of the policy according to a Survation poll, with only 16 per cent against it.

 
Formby criticised the Tories’ campaigning efforts, arguing that Labour didn’t need to resort to such pettiness.

 
“Labour doesn’t hide behind slick election strategies designed to manipulate the voting public,” she said. “It doesn’t rely on negative campaigning based on disingenuous personal attacks, which only cheapens the quality of political discourse in this country.

 
“Instead, Labour simply offers what the electorate has been yearning after for far too long – measures that actively attack injustice everywhere: from the tax system to the workplace. Labour predicates its campaign on a simple truth – that the public votes intelligently, based on measurable actions and not empty rhetoric.”