Yesterday's opinion poll in the London Times is a welcome gift for Mr Tony Blair as he prepares to return from his holidays. It shows the Labour Party up two points to 51 per cent from last month. More significantly, the Conservatives are down four points to 29 per cent, having failed to consolidate a recovery based on assertively right-wing policies on asylum-seekers and crime. Satisfaction with Mr Blair and Mr Hague has moved in a similar direction.
It looks as if the prime minister has benefited from the period of inactivity over the holiday - a relief from the usual frenetic pursuit of positive headlines to which his media advisers have apparently addicted him. One of them, Mr Philip Gould, argued in a memorandum leaked last month that the days were gone when politicians could assume they could recover from unpopular decisions taken in mid-term as elections loom; rather they must pursue popularity relentlessly as the price of political survival.
On the face of it, these results prove the opposite - that quiet achievement and even absence have their own rewards, as the political record sinks in with voters. This poll reflects the substantially increased resources for health, education and transport announced by the chancellor, Mr Gordon Brown, in last month's three-year spending review. It also echoes the active hostility among floating voters towards Mr Hague's campaign against asylum seekers that surfaced in the Romsey by-election on May 5th. His embrace of such policies has failed to appeal to the voters. This will probably reinforce his effort to bring questions of sovereignty over the European Union and membership of the euro to the centre of the looming election campaign.
Most observers now expect the elections to be held next summer. This, and other polls, have put that timing back on the political agenda after much speculation that Labour's mid-term problems, so apparent over the summer months, might cause the election to be pushed back to the autumn of next year or even into 2002. The forthcoming political season, opening with the party conferences, will therefore set the scene for a prolonged campaign. If Mr Blair is to consolidate this recovery, he will need to identify his government's priorities and achievements more clearly with voters, especially core Labour supporters and those who supported his party for the first time in 1997. The continuing buoyancy of the economy and Labour's record of sound economic management will stand to the government's credit, despite growing regional inequalities - many of them related to the impact of the strong sterling on manufacturing industry. The poll is bad news for Mr Hague as he faces into an autumn when he will be rapidly marginalised if he fails to close the gap with Labour.