Voters 'want cuts now'

The Guardian’s ICM poll is good news for the Conservatives, and bad news for Gordon Brown. One of his main lines of attack has been that the Tories want to see spending cut now, when he claims the economy is too fragile to bear it. But ICM finds that 64 per cent of respondents endorse the Tory proposal, including a majority of Labour respondents (55 per cent). Only 38 per cent of Labour voters want spending to keep rising. It even shows that low income voters want cuts by a margin of two to one.

Separately the poll gives the Conservatives a 14 point lead (enough for a 50 seat majority), although it puts Labour on 27pc which is lower than you might expect to see at a general election.