Nonexistent bogeymen

Tories still not going to win election shock:

Gordon Brown's budget has halted the Tory revival in its tracks and stretched Labour's opinion poll lead from three points last month to eight points now, according to this month's Guardian/ICM poll.

With 44 days to go to the expected May 5 general election, Labour, with a 40% share of the vote, holds its biggest lead since December.

Yes, it's only one poll, yes, the fat lady is nowhere near singing as yet - but Michael Howard is not going to be moving into Number 10 any time soon. (Gordon Brown, on the other hand, might be.) That doesn't prevent the Tories - and we might be able to detect an attempt at longer-term thinking here - making a nuisance of themselves, at best; at worst, shoving British politics way over to the right somewhere, in order to clean up next time round. (The hard-right tack has been a while coming, but there were signs of it emerging last year.)

Interesting aside: seems the kids aren't frightened by fairy stories any more:

Labour hopes that the sight of an early Tory bandwagon scaring its voters to the polls appear to have been misplaced with only 5% of Labour voters believing a Conservative victory is on the cards.

New Labour is faced with terrible prospect of actually having to persuade people of its own merits. Thank goodness for Gordy's big oily pork-barrel.