Labour party

Three weeks till polling day and Ken's supporters are getting desperate. The increasingly poor handling of his tax affairs is pushing the mayoralty ever further from his grasp. Last night's public debate didn't produce the repeat of that heated lift incident that the crowd was hoping for. The only issue that provoked real anger was that of Ken's tax affairs. When moderator Clive Anderson turned to Livingstone to ask about his tax arrangements, the crowd exploded with jeering and shouts of 'champagne socialist'. Ken floundered, unable to brush off the attack. The latest polling from ComRes also suggests that Ken's campaign is in serious trouble. Boris has now pushed forward to 53 per cent of the vote, opposed to 47 per cent for Ken.

All the recent chatter about UKIP being a big obstacle to a Tory majority in 2015 would be funny if it weren’t so sad. I’m never sure whether those who bring it up really believe it, or whether they’re just desperate to scare their fellow Conservatives into not swinging too far to the supposedly soggy centre. Either way, it simply won’t wash. Basically, the British electorate, like most electorates in advanced democracies, is like one big bell-curve. Most voters like to think of themselves as somewhere in or towards the middle, although there is of course a tail to either side. In PR systems, this tail can be big enough to give less centrist parties enough of niche to make it into parliament.

You certainly don’t need polls to tell you that it’s been a bad couple of weeks for the coalition – but we’ve got them anyway. Pete noted on Sunday that the government’s approval rating was at its lowest since the start of this Parliament, and it’s actually dropped another three points since. Today’s YouGov poll finds just 21 per cent giving the coalition the thumbs up, against 64 per cent who disapprove. That’s almost identical to the 20-64 split YouGov found for Gordon Brown’s Labour government back in January 2010. The below graph shows how public opinion has turned against the coalition over the past two years: Today’s poll also updates another important indicator: whom the public blames for the cuts we face.

Remember when Ed Miliband couldn't be found anywhere? Now you can barely get away from him. The Labour leader has been conspicuous by his presence over the past week, whether on the airwaves or in graffiti form (see left, a photo taken on London's South Bank yesterday). And he's continued that hi-vis trend today, by launching Labour's local election campaign in Birmingham. Two things stand out from the speech he gave at that event. The first was his heavy emphasis on the pledges he announced last week: capping railway fares, unfreezing the personal allowance for pensioners, etc.

Have the opinion polls ever looked more discouraging, overall, for the Tories during this government? Not that I can remember, although I'm happy to be corrected. Not only does YouGov's poll for the Sunday Times (£) have Labour ahead by nine points, but there are also some pretty dismal supplementary findings. For YouGov, both David Cameron and the coalition score their lowest approval ratings since the start of this Parliament. For ComRes in the Independent on Sunday, 72 per cent of respondents reckon the government is ‘out of touch with ordinary voters’; 81 per cent say the government created ‘unnecessary panic’ over fuel; and so on. It's probably no surprise that Tory MPs are now telling the Indy that ‘It is a friggin' shambles’.

If Andrew Lansley thought he could rest easy after passage of the Health Bill, then he's in for a rude awakening. Yesterday, the shadow Cabinet Minister Jon Trickett busted Lansley's department for spending £109,017 since January this year to supply its employees and visitors with free refreshments — aka, tea and biscuits. Naturally, Labour aren't telling the whole story here. The amount being spent has declined under the coalition, from £194,000 for the equivalent period in 2010, to £137,000 in 2011, to that £109,017 figure now. But, still, it's another classic example of waste during a time of austerity.

Ed Miliband's shadow cabinet could soon lack a Liam Byrne. The shadow work and pensions secretary is expected to announce his intention to run for the position of Mayor of Birmingham — and he'd quit his frontbench job to do so. There is, of course, one significant ‘if’ hanging over his candidacy: it would depend on Birmingham voting in favour of having an elected mayor in their referendum on 3 May. But given the polls so far, it's all looking quite likely. If Byrne does go, it would leave more than just a single role for Miliband to fill. He is not just the shadow work and pensions secretary, but also the man in charge of Labour's ongoing, interminable policy review.

The row over the so-called pasty tax is a proxy. It is really a row about whether David Cameron and George Osborne get what it is like to worry about the family budget each week.   In truth, I suspect that they don’t. But I think the same probably goes for Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg and the vast majority of journalists. Most of the politics of class in Westminster, as opposed to the country, is the narcissism of small difference.   The best thing the coalition could do now is hold its nerve. The Budget did reveal that support for it is shallow. But, as one leading pollster said to me yesterday, if they handle the tanker strike right, they’ll be ahead again by May — the next time anyone is voting in an actual election.