The real reason the Tory polls are up  

Why are the Tories now standing at their highest polls since the election?   This has of course given Ed Miliband’s Blairite enemies, both in the Shadow Cabinet and the PLP, the chance to dump on the leadership which is always the silver lining for them when there’s bad news.   They like to claim that, given the government’s vicious austerity programme, Labour should now be 10-15 points ahead, not 5 points behind.   But the truth, as so often, is very different and much more complex than that.   The real reason is that Labour has allowed the public to get imprinted on its mind (much assisted of course by huge right-wing media hostility) two crucial facts, both of which are wrong.   In addition Labour has failed to get across – indeed not even seriously tried to do so – two other equally crucial facts about the deficit.   For these...