New polling carried out by YouGov has revealed the British Public’s confidence in Government scientific advice has fallen from 71% in April to just 56% today. Not the best news as new restrictions are imposed upon swathes of the country…

Guido has compiled a quick reminder of the stellar track record of the scientific advice given to ministers:

• Do not wear masks.
• Do not suppress the virus too much.
• No point continuing “test, trace, and isolate” beyond March.
• Actually do lock down to suppress the virus.
• Now do more testing and isolating.
• Masks are good, actually.

This morning Matt Hancock is set to put the new restrictions on Greater Manchester, Lancashire and West Yorkshire into law, enabling police to issue fines of £100 on anyone breaking the new restrictions. Anecdotally, the police are going to have a job on their hands…

Labour unease with the mess that is the shadow Treasury is only set to grow following this gruelling polling showing that even 2019 Labour voters would prefer Rishi Sunak to be Chancellor compared to Labour’s own Anneliese Dodds. Among those who voted for Corbyn, Rishi leads Anneliese by 21 points to 14…

Answering the question “Which of these would make the better Chancellor of the Exchequer?” – the country as a whole backs Rishi by an overwhelming 44% to 6% – a 38 point lead. Even Marxist John McDonnell was comfortably in double figures when he was Shadow Chancellor. According to YouGov Dodds is now polling at less than half his score…

In what represents a startling swing over the last year, a majority of the British public now see the press as a “force for bad” – up from 43% to 53% in just eleven months. This is the first time “force for bad” has become the majority view since YouGov began asking and tracking the question. Conversely, the proportion who see the press as a “force for good” has collapsed from 32% to 23%, now polling behind ‘Don’t Know’. The swing in negativity has overwhelmingly come from the Tories…

All parties now see the press as a force for bad more than they do good, whereas just eleven months ago the Tories were overwhelmingly of the opposite opinion. Long-running anti-press sentiment has also become more extreme in the Labour Party, although muted a little in the LibDems. None of this will make happy reading for fleet street…

See also: Least Trusted by Right, Most Trusted By Left 

A new rating of pollsters’ accuracy compiled by Election Maps UK has Ipsos MORI coming out as Britain’s top polling company by a mile, when taking into account the 2017 and 2019 general elections, and the 2019 EU elections. Opinium and YouGov tied in second; Survation came third, ICM, BMG and Savanta Comres came bottom with average errors of up to 3%. Pollsters are more bitchy than hairdressers so this will cause Guido’s phone to ring hot with explanations of “flawed methodology”…

Hat-tip: @ElectionMapsUK

100 days into Sir Keir’s leadership of the Labour Party, and the Leader of the Opposition’s personal poll ratings are undeniably strong, leading Boris’s personal ratings on competence, decisiveness, trustworthiness and strength. Lagging on likeability though…

This begs the question, why does the Labour Party remain so far behind the Tories’ poll vote share – by 10% according to the latest poll. YouGov figures show the Labour party’s brand as a whole is undermining Starmer’s personal approval; while the public say Sir Keir does look like a PM in waiting (38%:34%), the Labour party really do not (23%:54%).

Starmer is also – unsurprisingly given his policies haven’t yet shown any divergence from Corbyn’s leadership – failing to gain the public’s trust on the economy, with Labour still coming third to ‘don’t know’ when the public are asked which government would be better at managing the economy.

In the current circumstances it is noteable that the governing party is polling 3 points higher than it did on the day they won the general election. While the public may compare Starmer’s leadership style to that of Tony Blair’s, unless he radically changes Labour’s economic offering, his election performance may not differ much from Corbyn’s…

Keir might be making progress with the public, his party is not. This will encourage those calling for Keir to make a decisive break with the left of his party…

UPDATE: Labour’s left is getting restless demanding to know where’s that centrist leader 20 point poll Tony Blair said they would get if Corbyn was ousted. Hardly surprising when the Tories are 3 points higher than the result they got in the general election last December…