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The slide in Labour's poll ratings in London is another grim sign of the battle the Government faces in the next general election.
This paper's research shows that the seven-point lead Labour enjoyed in 2005 has been turned into a 12-point lead for the Conservatives today. If there were that swing across the whole capital, Labour would lose 17 seats. The swing would be unlikely to be that large but such polling helps explain the fatalism now gripping Labour as it heads into its party conference.
The prediction is significant for the other parties, too. Since 1997, the Tories' failure to win back significant numbers of seats in London has been symptomatic of their sluggish recovery nationally, and an indicator of their persistent difficulty in breaking through in the cities, especially in the north and Midlands. Boris Johnson's election last year was promising for them but he is a maverick: this polling suggests that the Tories' gains in the capital may at last be firming up significantly.
At the same time, our research is bad news for the Liberal Democrats, down three points on their 2005 share. Their lacklustre conference this week has done little to raise their profile, while their proposed additional tax on homes worth more than £1 million could have a damaging effect on the Lib-Dem vote in the capital.
However much Gordon Brown rallies his party next week, it is probably too late to rescue his election prospects: no party in recent history has come back from being so far being so far behind in the polls, so close to an election.
Yet the Tories should take a warning, too, from London's shifting allegiances. Much of the capital's disaffection with Labour surely stems from the Government's indifference or even hostility to the capital since 1997. We were given a mayoralty but with deliberately stunted powers; meanwhile, as Labour poured billions into the soup-kitchen economies of its northern and Scottish urban heartlands, it neglected the infrastructure of London, the dynamo of the whole UK economy. Now there are whispers that a Tory government might cancel Crossrail. Ministers ignore the capital's voters at their peril.
Reining in the banks
The row at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh over the subject of bankers' bonuses was predictable: Britain and the US are resisting the more robust approach demanded by Germany and France. But expectations for a crackdown were partly a result of previous posturing by Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling on the issue.
Both have talked tough on bonuses, blaming the bankers for the recession, yet they have come up with no concrete proposals. Moreover, it was in part Mr Brown's own lackadaisical approach to regulation in his decade as Chancellor which encouraged banks to take ever-greater risks.
In fact, the chances of any international deal to limit bonuses were always remote: it would be hard to police. Better to give regulators the tools to do their job properly, overseeing financial institutions so that the high-risk-taking culture behind the bonuses does not again take hold. That would do more good than more cheap talk about bankers.
Gravy train rolls on
The antics of Andrew Rosindell, Conservative MP for Romford, show that some parliamentarians remain determined to hang on to their perks despite the expenses scandal. Mr Rosindell and other MPs and peers took £6,300 business flights to Fiji and stayed at a five-star hotel in August as part of a 16-day “fact-finding trip” on climate change, racking up substantial bills charged to the taxpayer.
The contrast with the hardships suffered by our soldiers in Afghanistan could not be greater — and indeed it was the gulf between MPs' greed and their penny-pinching on troops' kit which is reported to have prompted the leak of the full details of MPs' expenses. Until the gravy train halts, MPs should not be surprised if their perks continue to provoke such anger.
