Stop listening to marketing men, top Tory tells Cameron

Senior Tory MP Derek Conway - a close ally of Shadow Home Secretary David Davis - urged Mr Cameron to "reflect" on the quality of advice he has been receiving from a small coterie of advisers.

A reinvigorated Labour Party has opened up a nine-point lead over the Conservatives, fuelling a sense of crisis surrounding Mr Cameron.

There is a growing sense of unease among senior figures in the party following a series of setbacks and blunders - including two embarrassing by-election defeats, Mr Cameron's failure to hold ministers to account over the flood crisis and the bitter row over grammar schools.

This week, the Tory leader was heavily criticised for going abroad when parts of his Witney constituency in Oxfordshire were under water. Many MPs are particularly concerned that he has been relying on the advice of a small group of individuals, known as the "Notting Hill set", which includes the marketing guru Steve Hilton.

Mr Hilton is widely believed to have been behind the disastrous decision to conduct the recent Ealing Southall by-election as "David Cameron's Conservatives".

Mr Conway warned: "I think David Cameron will reflect on what his closest advisers are saying to him.

"Those that would really like to see the leader as a different brand to the Conservative Party - and there are some around him from a marketing sense who feel that way - I think probably forget that the Tory Party polled more votes in England at the last election than any other party." Despite his own concerns, Mr Conway went on to urge Mr Cameron's critics to give the Tory leader a break and not to "panic".

But leading polling experts have added to the party's woes by rubbishing suggestions that Mr Brown was experiencing a temporary "bounce" in the polls, saying his popularity was likely to last for a "long time".

"I wouldn't be too happy about us calling it a bounce because we do not know if it is going to be a bounce in the sense that it is going to go away," said Stefan Shakespeare, director of public opinion research at YouGov.

"Something quite fundamental has happened which is the dissatisfaction that people had with the previous Blair Government has now been replaced by Brown and he has a lot of the advantages of being a new prime minister - a new start.

"My guess is that the affect of this will really last quite a long time. I do not expect this to come down in the next week or two, which is what the word bounce would imply."

The YouGov poll put Labour on 41 per cent, ahead of the Tories on 32 per cent. If the results were replicated at the next general election, Mr Brown would win a record fourth term with a landslide majority of more than 100 seats.

Worryingly for Mr Cameron, the poll showed that his personal rating - once seen as a major strength for the Tories - has slumped 16 points from 43 per cent in February to 27 per cent today.

When asked who would make the best Prime Minister, only 19 per cent opted for Mr Cameron and 37 per cent for Mr Brown.

Mr Shakespeare added: "I think the most significant thing about this poll is not only the headline number of nine per cent, which is of course a huge move towards Brown but also the underlying numbers.

"David Cameron isn't seen as such a great leader of the Conservative Party any more."