Fraser Nelson

If David Cameron liked the YouGov poll in the Telegraph last Thursday, he will love tomorrow’s News of the World. For the first time since the bottled election it has commissioned ICM to poll the marginals. You rarely see this – it’s difficult and very expensive to do. The result? That the boy Ashcroft done well. It suggests Cameron would make net gains of 131 seats, a 64-seat majority (Brown has 65 today). The last time the NOTW did this poll, Brown called off the election – then (story, pdf), it suggested Labour would lose almost 50 seats. The damage has more than doubled since. As you would expect from such a lead, Cameron is also ahead on the issues, the biggest lead being immigration.

After that ICM poll suggesting the Tory lead had shrunk to 5 points, tomorrow's Telegraph gives Cameron just what he wants ahead of next week's local elections: an 18 point lead. Breakdown is 44-26-17. It's YouGov, in my view the most reliable pollster. When YouGov had the Tories with 16 point lead it was seen as a freak, until everyone else reached a similar figure eventually.  To win, Cameron needs the biggest swing ever achieved by the moderen Conservative party in Opposition. And yet, such a goal is starting to look increasingly likely.

Why are all these Labour MPs worried about the 10p tax? It is the least of the ways in which this Labour government has hurt the poor over its years in government. Let me count the ways – well, half a dozen anyway: 1) Sink schools. By granting LEAs monopoly control over education provision, bureaucrats have keep bad schools going by forcing children there. It’s the children of the poor, however. Reform points this out in its excellent social mobility report today (pdf, p15). While 47 per cent of students achieved five decent GCSEs last year, this was true for just 20% of those eligible for free schools meals. The inequality is getting worse, not better. To paraphrase Neil Kinnock, is this because the poor kids are thick? Nope.

Like George Osborne, I was struck by David Miliband saying in his News of the World article that the government needs to look at things through the eyes of the voters. Right now, Gordon Brown is looking at them through the eyes of a central planner saying “you ungrateful lot, don’t you know inflation is below that of the Eurozone and America?” People don’t care about the price of sauerkraut in Munich – what matters is the price of an egg here. Brown may argue that's unfair. But this isn’t East Germany. What the voters think matters. Last week we saw a prime minister, a pope and a pop star trying to make it big in America. Two succeeded – Leona Lewis hit no1 in the US album chart and Pope Benedict filled stadium with the faithful.

Gordon Brown claims he is baffled by the suggestion that his decision to double (not abolish) the 10p starting rate of tax hurts anyone. We all have it confused somehow, he says. So this comment on The Times website may be worth repeating: "Mr. Brown. LET ME SPELL IT OUT TO YOU. I do not pay tax at 22% so the cut to 20% does not help me.  I cannot claim pension credit (which is not taxed) because my private pension puts me £2 over the cut off. (Private pension is taxed.)  State Pension £5148. Private Pension £1622. Personal Tax Allowance £5,435 Taxable income £1,335. Tax 07/08 £135 Tax 08/09 £270.  I can do the maths. Why can't you?

Now for four words which, in my experience, CoffeeHousers hate the most: “in fairness to Brown”. Not many other national leaders could have drawn all three presidential hopefuls to meet him in one day. We teased him for having next to no coverage in the American press yesterday, and there’s plenty today. He also struck the right note over Zimbabwe. Okay, fairness over. Here’s what the Washington Post has to say about the Bush press conference: "Times are so bad, in fact, that Brown flew to America on a plane provided by the discount charter company Titan Airways. The stature of the two leaders had shrunk so much that there were empty seats in the Rose Garden yesterday, and only Fox News bothered to have its correspondent do a live report from the event.

Whenever Blair didn’t like the heat in Britain he’d jet off abroad. But Brown’s trip to America seems to cast his shortcomings into even sharper relief. My thoughts on the visit so far: 1) Meeting Wall Street figures and pretending to bang heads together about the credit crunch will be recognised as a stunt in America. USA Today has a quote to this effect from Graham Wilson, a political science professor at Boston University. “I'm skeptical that any jawboning has any effect. I'm not sure Wall Street will respond to a British prime minister.” 2) Wilson also tells USA Today “If he wanted publicity in the United States, it's a rather odd time to come.

Can someone please give Gordon Brown a crash course in recent world history? "European leadership did not support President Bush in Iraq other than Britain and one or two other countries," he tells CBS before his trip to the US . "I feel I can bring Europe and America closer together for the future." Hmmm. Only one or two countries? Spain, Portugal, The Netherlands, Hungary, Norway, Poland, Italy, Slovakia and Denmark supported the Iraq war. He would do better bringing them together if he had the faintest idea about their role in the Iraq conflict. I suppose he was so deep underwater at that stage avoiding making any supportive speeches himself that he couldn't have taken much notice.