With Ed continuing to plummet in the polls and Labour peers voting against the wishes of Labour voters on the benefits bill, Guido is not that surprised to learn that a crisis meeting has been called, for after PMQs tomorrow at 1230, there will be a briefing session on public attitudes to Labour and welfare reform in the Shadow Cabinet room for members of the PLP.

The session will be lead by James Morris, who is seconded from pollsters Greenberg Quinlan Rosner to Team Ed. He will break the news to the MPs gently, by running through Labour’s private polling. The Shadow Cabinet will be coaxed towards an understanding of the attitudes of that reality based community, better known as the voting public, with hard data about what the public think about Labour’s position on welfare and welfare reform generally. Guido hopes that Morris will offer a slightly more astute and sophisticated analysis than he tweeted last night:

Poll round up: Labour leads in populus and yougov, level in comres, behind in icm—
James Morris (@JamesDMorris) January 24, 2012

This benefits cap issue is toxic for Labour, who are violently out of sync with the public here, in particular their own lower-income working voters. Oh to be a fly on the wall tomorrow…

More bad news for Boris today as a ComRes poll echoes last week’s YouGov offering that had Ken in the lead. The jubilation in Labour circles is on the up, but they obviously didn’t get the same lines Chuka was sent for his appearance on the Sunday Politics yesterday: “Polls go up and down… you’re obsessed with polls Andrew”. Heads in the sand…

The pollster and commentator Peter Kellner has written an open letter to Nick Clegg suggesting that to save himself in 2012 he backs an In/Out referendum, he argues that the Yes side would win because Cameron would join Ed Miliband and Alex Salmond in campaigning for a Yes. Kellner believes, somewhat optimistically, a united political class would overcome entrenched popular opinion and press opposition.

They would, in Kellner’s view, sway currently €uro-sceptic public opinion in the course of the campiagn to the Yes side. Given that Clegg’s negative public approval rating has gone from a terrible -40% to a catastrophic -55% this would for once put Clegg on the public’s side of an argument. Kellner argues that if Clegg called for a referendum he would receive the public’s credit, Cameron would have to concede. Tory backbenchers would demand it and Cameron would not be able to resist the Tory right and the LibDems combined.

Kellner is a technocratic pollster and this has a certain Machiavellian logic to it. Guido has one other reason why Clegg should call for an In/Out referendum: he promised one without any Cameron cast-iron “if the treaty isn’t signed” wiggle room or qualification.

Clegg promised in writing

The Liberal Democrats believe that Britain should have a referendum, not on the narrow question of adopting this new treaty, but on the big question that faces Britain, whether we remain a part of the EU or not.

The question of Britain’s place in the European Union has poisoned our national politics for decades.  As a nation, we need to lance this boil and decide once and for all if we want to be a part of this European Union or not.

So he can outflank the Tories on Europe and restore some of his lost trust. Why is he waiting to honour his promise?

Newsnight gave Ed a pasting last night, but sometimes a graph is all you need. Left Foot Forward have hit the spot:

Half the country thinks he possess absolutely no qualities worth noting. Guido hears that CCHQ strategists have scrapped an attack on Ed’s leadership pencilled in for Friday morning, post by-election defeat…

The role of Deputy Party Chairman seems to be forcing Tom Watson further and further from the reality based community. When he’s not paying special close attention to candidate selection, he’s in full spin mode. With the Tories regaining the lead with every major pollster, today was going to be a tricky one, but you can’t fault him for his effort:

Careful you don’t get splinters while you scrape that barrel Tommy…

Europe is now the third most important issue to voters. A few months ago Guido suggested that if Ed had any eye for the long game he would ground Labour in popular Euroscepticism. He didn’t listen, in fact he did the polar opposite, and now he’s paying the price in the polls. Miliband’s lead over the Tories is about the only reason most of the Parliamentary Labour Party put up with him. Today every major polling firm has the Tories ahead or at least level with Labour again. Uh oh…

YouGov and Ipos-Mori both have the Tories on 2 points ahead on 41, while Survation and ComRes have them tied on 38. The LibDems are still just on the right side of double digits, while UKIP, who have been enjoying a recent surge while it appeared Cameron was going to sell the country down the river, have dropped back down to the 4 or 5 point mark.  That vote is sure to trickle back up after the initial veto-honeymoon for Dave…

Miliband has slumped in personal rankings as well. And it’s not just the pro-polling:

“But it’s a new LabourList poll of grassroots members that may also dismay Team Miliband. It found that the number of their readers rating Ed a good or excellent leader has fallen from 40% in November to just 26% this month. His decline in popularity appears to be linked to the public sector strikes: although 83% of readers backed the industrial action, only 25% though the Labour leader handled his party’s response well.”

Labour will win tomorrow’s by-election, but if these numbers become a regular feature it’s going take more than a “five-point plan for jobs and growth” to save Ed’s bacon.

The ICM poll showing a 2% Tory lead is being discounted as a rogue, after all YouGov and others show a single digit lead for Ed Miliband. That may be true, but there is a consistent Tory lead when poll respondents are forced to choose between Cameron and Miliband. A cabinet minister told Guido that come election day the choice will boil down to Prime Minister Miliband or Prime Minister Cameron and that is no contest. Dave, like Blair before him, is lucky in his opponents.

Dave’s luck held last week, for on the day following George Osborne telling the nation that the Coalition would fail to in its primary mission of closing the deficit by the end of this parliament, a failure to achieve the goal which Osborne set himself, the news flow turned on the unions. Any attack by Ed Balls on Osborne was drowned out by the Labour Party’s paymasters striking against deficit reducing measures.

Dave’s third piece of luck was provided by his friend Jeremy Clarkson. Clarkson’s “shoot the strikers” row drowned out the union’s message. Most of the population will remember only Clarkson’s outburst about strikers rather than the exact reason they were striking. Instead of the front page story being about pensions it was about Clarkson, some might think the unions were protesting against Jeremy. Dave couldn’t have planned it better…

Guido is currently up to his neck trying to unravel sleazy paper trails, company documents and bank account details. He’s not quite ready to lift that lid, so in the mean time he thought he’d share some bad news for Red Ed in the latest Ipos Mori data. Reality based Labour supporters are waking up to what a disaster he is going to be for them:

The number of Labour voters dissatisfied with his leadership has tripled in a year. Nearly forty percent are not happy…

As the Honourable Members go through the division lobbies at ten o’clock tonight they will be voting against the will of the public. Even the Guardian say so…

Their ICM poll conducted this week says that 70% want a referendum. 49% want to leave the EU. Empirical proof that our political class are not representing the people…