Clegg’s strategy in coalition has been to promote the LibDems as the party of fairness. Apparently with no sense of irony, he has attacked the Tories for failing to “adopt the politics of fairness”, told Martha Kearney he is the “voice of fairness” in government, and dreamt up that catchy-as-it-is-believable slogan “Building a fairer Britain”. Unfortunately for Nick, repeating something over and over doesn’t mean the public will believe him.

A YouGov poll out this morning finds only 6% think Clegg would be the most effective leader at making Britain a fairer place. Nearly double that, 11%, choose Nigel Farage as the fairest party leader. There’s bad news for Ed too, he comes second to Dave by 21% to 19%. Topping the poll is public apathy: 29% said no leader could deliver a fairer society. People might disagree about what fairness means, but nearly everyone agrees Clegg won’t deliver it…

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation have actually put out something interesting for a change. Over the last thirty years, Labour supporters’ attitudes to welfare have hardened considerably. In the late eighties 41% believed social injustice was the main cause of poverty, now that figure is just 27%. This can be explained in part by the number that blame laziness amongst those on benefits, up from 13% to 22%. 31% of Labour backers see welfare recipients as undeserving, compared to just 21% thirty years ago. The biggest jump: 46% now believe the welfare state encourages dependency, up from just 16% in 1987. You can see how attitudes have changed among Labour supporters by clicking on the interactive chart above. Ed may want to lead the party of welfare, but his voters are not with him.

Talking of headaches for Dave, last night’s ICM/Guardian poll has UKIP on 18%, their highest ever rating and double their ICM rating for a month ago. Labour, the Tories and the LibDems all lost four points each, with Labour falling below Ed’s fabled 35% target. UKIP are up nine points. What was that about a referendum?

UKIP at their highest ever poll rating for YouGov, Tories at their lowest this parliament. 25% of Tory 2010 voters are now backing UKIP. It isn’t as simple as 27+17 beats 38, but food for thought nonetheless…

The uphill struggle in the fight for freedom for Scotland is getting steeper. This morning’s Ipsos Mori poll has just 31% of Scots saying yes to freedom, with 59% of Scots now saying they would vote to stay under the cruel yolk of English oppression. The battle will be long…

Tory strategists could be forgiven for worrying that after three years of little or no growth and a £120 billion spending black hole this year alone, Dave and George’s reliance on blaming Britain’s economic slump on the last Labour government might be wearing thin with voters. Apparently not.

A study by media agency OMD of over 2,000 adults from across the UK has found that 53% still blame the previous Labour government for Britain’s ongoing economic problems, compared with just 39% blaming the coalition. 39% say Gordon is the main culprit, with just 27% fingering Cameron and 23% Osborne. Numbers Downing Street will be clinging onto…

If you took Guido’s advice yesterday morning you could have got evens on UKIP getting  50 seats. Guido got a bit greedy after lunch:

Just been round various bookies in the West End putting £50 bets on UKIP to do well so as not to move the market.—
Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) April 30, 2013

After last night’s poll those odds are now 10/1 on…

For some reason Ipsos Mori haven’t taken kindly to a ‘Labour source’ telling LabourList’s Mark Ferguson that they “consistently brief highly selective data to create misleading impressions”. In a withering riposte on their website, they insist things really are that bad for Ed:

“Mr Ferguson’s complaint appears to be about Joe Murphy’s coverage of our questions about Ed Miliband in the Evening Standard. He states that “To read the report you’d think that the results were abnormally bad for Ed Miliband (as it happens, Cameron was far further behind Brown at this stage than Miliband is behind Cameron)”, and Joe Murphy himself reported that “A Labour source said David Cameron was further behind Gordon Brown at the same stage in the last Parliament.” But the results are, all, abnormally bad for Ed Miliband, and Cameron was not further behind Brown at the same stage in the last parliament… We therefore request that Mr Ferguson:

• provides evidence for or corrects his assertion that Cameron was further behind Brown than Miliband is behind Cameron at this stage of the parliament;
• makes it clear in his piece that the changes in satisfaction for both Cameron and Miliband since last month are not statistically significant.”

Fight…

“No indication of huge Romanian-Bulgarian influx”, is the BBC spin from their poll of potential migrants to the UK. The reassuring results show just 4.2% of Bulgarians and 1% of Romanians are making definite plans to come to Britain in 2013 or 2014. For some reason the Beeb haven’t mentioned how that translates into actual real numbers. 4.2% of 4.67 million working age Bulgarians equals 196,140, and 1% of 15.3 million working age Romanians equates to 153,000, making a pretty daunting total of 349,140. Not that you’d hear that number from the BBC themselves…

Not quite, but it seems Dave had a point. According to a YouGov poll on the day of the funeral, 52% support free market competition and back wealth creating profit makers, while 45% oppose regulation and stronger trade unions. Her legacy lives on…