We tend not to be too poll-obsessed here at LDV - of course we look at them, as do all other politico-geeks, but viewed in isolation no one poll will tell you very much beyond what you want to read into it. Looked at over a reasonable time-span and, if there are enough polls, you can see some trends.

Here, in chronological order, are the results of the most recent nine polls since our last round-up on 28th March:

Tories 43%, Labour 32%, Lib Dems 18% - ICM/Telegraph (6th April)
Tories 39%, Labour 33%, Lib Dems 17% - Populus/Times (8th April)
Tories 44%, Labour 28%, Lib Dems 17% - YouGov/Sunday Times (13th April)
Tories 40%, Labour 30%, Lib Dems 19% - Populus/Mirror (20th April)
Tories 39%, Labour 34%, Lib Dems 19% - ICM/Guardian (21st April)
Tories 44%, Labour 26%, Lib Dems 17% - YouGov/Telegraph (24th April)
Tories 40%, Labour 31%, Lib Dems 19% - Mori/Observer (27th April)
Tories 39%, Labour 29%, Lib Dems 20% - ICM/Telegraph (27th April)
Tories 40%, Labour 26%, Lib Dems 20% - YouGov/Telegraph (29th April)

Which gives us an average rating for the parties in April as follows, compared with February’s average:
Tories 41% (n/c), Labour 30% (-1%), Lib Dems 19% (+1%)

In previous round-ups I’ve complained about the erratic vote share ascribed to the Lib Dems, with (for instance) YouGov showing the party polling consistently lower – and outside the margin of error – compared to ICM. Yet in April all four polling companies had the party within the range 17-20%: whether this is a reflection of a firming up of Lib Dem support, especially in the run-up to local elections - or pure chance - we will discover in the weeks to come.

Instead, it is now Labour’s turn to be turning in an erratic polling display, with four polls showing them below 30% (a truly disastrous showing). Within three days, two polls showed the party at 26% (YouGov) and 34% (ICM): some difference. Quite what the reason for this sudden turbulence might be, I’m not sure. I’m guessing it’s a reflection of the ‘certainty to vote’ criteria which different polling companies apply in order to reflect what voters will actually do in the polling booth (and whether they’ll bother voting at all).

Much was made of the Tories’ huge leads over Labour during April: yet their average rating remained stuck at the 41% level. The large differences between the parties have been a reflection of Labour weakness, rather than Tory strength.

When I agreed to write this monthly round up of Labour and Tory blogging I said I would aim to “keep a balance between pointing to interesting postings that we Lib Dems may have missed and laughing at the folly of our opponents”.

So here goes.

Labour

Disloyalty is common in politics, so its refreshing to come across Kezia Dugdale and her staunch defence of Gordon Brown’s decision to scrap the 10p tax band:

Pensioners and families are better off. Childless adults of working age are a little worse off. Would you rather it was the other way around?

Gordon Brown had to make a political calculation as to how best to lift the income of low earners, without spending so much that he had to do something extremely unpopular to pay for it. Most Labour MPs like it, 70 don’t.

I have not been back to check her blog since Gordon Brown’s U-turn, but I bet you will find she has written an equally staunch defence of his new position. I predict this woman will be in parliament before long.

Unfortunately, not everyone is so loyal. Take John Wiseman, for instance. Here is the Labour PPC for Westmoreland & Lonsdale writing on Labour Home:

I seem to be in the middle of a nightmare at present. The BNP are standing all over my home constituency. Everyone seems depressed where I am standing for parliament. Gordon has decided to take money away from his core vote, PPS’s are threatening to resign!! When are we going to wake up!!! There is hundreds of councillors who are going to lose their seats if Gordon doesn’t listen. I am asking please Gordon for the last time wake up and smell the coffee and save the party as in rectify the tax change!!!

Doesn’t he realise what our Glorious Leader is doing for the country?

Elsewhere in the Labour photosphere there have been some moving tributes to Gwyneth Dunwoody. Harry Barnes, the former Labour MP, came to appreciate her worth even though they came from opposite wings of the party. And Paul Flynn points out that she was:

the last of a generation of women MPs of exceptional talent who succeeded mainly because they were tougher than their male counterparts. Gwyneth was generously endowed with strength, guile, humour, courage and integrity.

Back on Labour Home, Mike Ion exposes links between the Pensioners Party and the BNP and seems to have dissolved them in the process.

And Theo’s Blog reports on a row about parking in Hampstead between David Aaronovitch and Tom Conti. Hampstead is like that.

Much as it pains me to say it, the Communist-turned-Blairite Aaronovitch appears to be in the right.

Tories

Back to loyalty. You would have to be a very loyal supporter of Tony Blair indeed to write about the invasion of Iraq in these terms:

But in twenty years from now, even the most defiant anti-war protesters may concede that maybe, just maybe, when Iraq’s children are running around in the street with full tummies and free from the fear of brutality, when our children can sleep safe in their beds still free British citizens, that a good job was done by brave men and women.

A very loyal Blairite or a very stupid Tory. Step forward Mad Nad.

And then we have Dizzy Thinks and his remarkable take on Christianity:

If you start setting limits on earning that what would that do for wealth creation? What’s the point in trying to earn more money if a limit is set on how much you may earn? That’s not even socialism, it’s bordering on communism.

It’s a point of view, but maybe the Archbishop was thinking of camels and needles’ eyes? There are still some Church of England clergymen who read the Bible.

Then there are a couple of stories from Conservative Home.

First there is The story of how the party’s EU enthusiasts fixed the MEP selection process. You can see why the website is so cross: there are a lot of headbangers in the Tory Party and they deserve to have their views represented in the party’s decision-making process.

Then there is its guileless appeal to Help us make the ‘Nasty Ken video’. Conservatives, you understand, are really nice people, but Ken is so nasty that he forces them to be nasty too.

At least one Tory is on the side of the angels. Hunter and Shooter went on the demonstration against the parading of the Olympic torch through London:

The icing on the cake, when I got home, was to see that Gordon’s Gang were just too gormless to have seen this PR disaster unfolding all day, and actually allowed these Chinese security ‘guards’ to enter Downing Street, push people around in front of the TV cameras and organise the photo shoot! How weak! How pathetic! Gordon isn’t even master of his own doorstep, let alone the country! That’s one video clip I hope gets repeated endlessly…

And this just in… Mr Bean has a blog and is standing for the Conservatives in Manchester.

* Jonathan Calder blogs at Liberal England and for the New Statesman.

The last Prime Minister’s Questions before the 1st May elections was always likely to prove a rowdy affair: and so it proved. Yet the pattern was wearily familiar.

Gordon Brown and David Cameron slug it out, with Gordon looking embattled but resilient, and Dave looking smart but insubstantial. Then Nick gets up, gets shouted down by MPs determined to put him off his stride, asks a couple of sharp questions targeted equally at the Tories and Labour; and Gordon replies that the country would go to the dogs under ‘the Liberals’ (he still can’t quite bring himself to call the party by its proper name).

Commentators then argue over which of the three leaders emerged best. The honest answer: none of them.

Anyway, you can watch today’s PMQs encounter over at BBC.co.uk; or you can read the Hansard transcript below: Read more »

The local newspaper reports:

‘Mayor-Elect’, [Labour] Councillor Robin Parker, will be investigated after trying to use his influence as a Councillor to get [Liberal Democrat councillor] Jean Ashworth sacked from her job at Rochdale Infirmary. The complaint to the Standards Board related to a series of emails that Councillor Parker sent to health bosses demanding that Councillor Ashworth be disciplined.

For more on this story, see my previous posting.

When we shared viral vids from Paddick’s campaign with you yesterday, you weren’t impressed. Our readers thought they were a worrying sign that American style attack ads were crossing the Atlantic.  And some simply pointed out they couldn’t sustain a joke for long enough.  Not a patch on Armando Ianucci.

There are however some signs that they are doing the job they are intended to, as this unrepentant press release from Paddick HQ points out: Read more »

Two final viral vids to promote Brian Paddick - one about Boris (”Somewhere in Oxfordshire, a village is missing its idiot”)

And the “Ken and Friends World Tour!”

Interesting information to be found if you read the latest proxy votes list for Thursday’s Winchester Council elections. Since the news broke that a Conservative activist in Whiteley ward, John Hall, has been charged by the police with false registration information, false proxy voting application and making a false instrument, the council has issued the final list of proxy votes for Thursday’s elections.

Comparing this list with the previous list shows that six proxy votes in the Whiteley ward are no more. Of the six, two had John Hall down as the person to cast their vote. Another two had his wife, Sue Hall, and the last two had the wife of this year’s Conservative candidate down. It looks as if all six were taken out in suspicious circumstances, though of course we don’t yet know who knew what about what went on.

Magistrate’s blog contrasts the views of an official of the Prison Officer’s Association with the views of an insider.

Of course, if you really want to know what life is like in prison, visit one. Most prisons have links to the community around them. Many faith groups are involved in prison visiting. Nottingham’s Prison does outreach work with young offenders in a bid to prevent them ending up incarcerated. And the National Association of Official Prison Visitors would be happy to hear from you if you would like to volunteer.

Our weekly guide to the good on Lib Dem Voice

This week, two important appeals for your input:

• Our competition for the last LDV mug
• Tell Alix your election results as they happen

The highest number of comments this week were recorded on

• Should a dangerously incompetent anaesthetist become a councillor?
• Our weekly date with Question Time - London Mayor special (also available in Rainbow Edition on Something for the Weekend)
• Ming for Speaker?

Guest contributors brought us

• Shifting the unequal state
• (… yes… just the one guest contributor last week. Why don’t you write us an article?)

Saga of the week

• Police investigate Conservative campaign in Swansea
• Police make more arrests in Slough
• Conservative arrested over proxy vote application
• Dial S for Scandal

Don’t miss

• Will Howells’s Something for the Weekend
• Jeremy Browne’s Parliamentary Gem
  

And finally…

• The Sam Seaborn Award for Geography goes to William Hague. Bet Mark Pack knows which of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan has the nukes and which has the sheep.

I blogged yesterday about a couple of serious holes in the argument in John Rentoul’s piece for The Independent, in which he argued that the party’s fortunes had not increased under Nick Clegg’s leadership. Ironic really then that the newspaper carrying an opinion poll tomorrow showing the Liberal Democrats up three points to their highest rating with that pollster for a year should be … The Independent. Ho hum.

Welcome to the 62nd of our weekly round-ups from the Lib Dem blogosphere, featuring the seven most popular stories according to click-throughs from the Aggregator (20th-26th April), together with a hand-picked quintet you might otherwise have missed.

Let’s get straight down to it, in descending order of popularity:

And the libdemmo-blogosphere has been lit up this week with the fate of Cllr Gavin Webb. Read all about it below:

1. Liberty Alone: Why has Gavin Webb been suspended from the party? including 33 responses…

2. Lanson Boy: Gavin Webb: suspended for saying what he believes in

3. Love and Liberty: Free the Stoke One!

4. A brief respite from the cause célèbre in Alex Wilcock’s second bite at the cherry with the acerbic “‘D’oh! conned again!’ say the World’s Stupidest MPs”

5. Orange by Name picks up the Gavin Webb story with Freedom of speech in the Liberal Democrats?

6. Bob Shaw (yes, Bob, you did make it in, thanks for asking): gets the gen Straight from the Horse’s Mouth

7. Finally, Jonathan Fryer changed the subject completely with Why I’ve voted for Ken

Our hand-picked quintet this week are

8. Appropriately enough a joint entry as Liberal Bureaucracy and Because Baronesses are People too tied the knot last week. Congratulations from all at The Voice.

9. Helen Duffett explains why Gordon Brown is the worst kind of small child and is plagued by UFOs

10. Paul Walters applauds Kelvin Mackenzie for putting his mouth where his money is and standing for his local council.

11. Richard Baum has delivered his own body weight in leaflets.

12. And finally, Lord Bonkers regales us with his tales of Gentleman’s Quarterly and the All-Cornwall L T Hobhouse Recitation Contest.

Featured? Add this to your blog post!

Nick Clegg used a speech to the 4Children conference today to attack Labour’s record on childcare and early years education:

The sad truth is that, in Britain today, opportunity is in short supply for too many children.

A child’s chances in life are more determined by his parents’ income than anywhere else in the developed world. Social mobility is grinding to a halt. Inequality is rising…

It is absolutely vital that our approach is not prescriptive. Because every family is different.
And it is clear that when services are designed to make life easy for government, or local councils, instead of families, far too many people fall through the gaps.
Read more »

… will kick off at 11.35pm on One this Thursday, and will feature a regular bloggers’ spot on the programme itself and an accompanying minute-by-minute blog of results, news, anecdotes, pictures, groundless speculation and, please god, a few laughs.

Your present correspondent will be in the yellow corner, diametrically opposite to, and equidistant from, Iain Dale and Luke Akehurst. Part of the premise is that we, El Bloggers, are going to try to beat the Beeb on getting results in. Our blogs will be syndicated to the BBC blog and because we don’t have to get it right wait for confirmation, we can get results up as soon as we hear about them from our own sources.

And in my case that means YOU, LDV eggs. If you’re going to be propping your eyelids open at a count, or you know someone who is and don’t mind blearily transmitting some news in the small hours, the Beeb wants to hear from you. It can be exit polls, early indicators, unconfirmed results, unexpected developments, rumours, amusing pictures, breaking news on the tea and coffee facilities… All suitable disclaimers will be in place and you can let me know if you’d rather not be named as a source (as if, you shameless attention-seekers). Choose your weapon:

Comment below. I’ll keep the page open throughout the night. I’m sure there will also be a sounding-off thread on the night which I’ll also have open.

Facebook message or email me. Details on my blog.

Comment over at my gaff. There’ll be an entry there soon.

Twitter at me. @AlixMortimer. My mobile will be switched on and my parents are under strict instructions not to call me and tell me I’m on TV.

If you have a blog and rattle off any posts of your own over the course of the night, please drop me the link on any of the above, likewise if you see anything good on someone else’s blog.

Ed Davey thinks not.

… because I’ve nothing really to add to Alex’s excellent piece, other than to say, “Oh dear BBC, you really did get your story horribly wrong, didn’t you?”

This time it’s Hampshire where the police are taking a close interest in the election tactics of Conservative Party members:

POLICE have charged a political activist with attempting to rig one of Thursday’s local elections.

John Hall, who has been campaigning for the Conservatives in Whiteley, is accused of applying for a proxy vote without the person’s permission.

The fiercely-contested Winchester City Council ward was won by the Tories at the last election by tightest of margins, beating the Liberal Democrats by just 19 votes…

Hall has been charged with false registration information, false proxy voting application and making a false instrument.

UPDATE: Liz Leffman has some further information on her website.

UPDATE 2: The Conservatives appearing to be trying to distance themselves from John Hall, so it’s worth recording that he used to be mentioned on the Meon Valley Conservatives website. A search there at the moment for his name produces zero results, but courtesy of Google’s cache (on display at the moment of writing here) we can see that he used to be listed as the contact for one of their fundraising events. Contact for a fundraiser? You’d normally call such a person “an activist”.

Screenshot of the cached web page is preserved for posterity here.

UPDATE 3: More proxy votes have now come under suspicion.