“We need to talk about Ed”

That was the original title of Anthony Wells’s brilliant post on UK Polling Report yesterday. He has now changed it to “Is Ed Miliband a drag on Labour’s support?” A Question to Which the Answer is, You Think?

This is the graph that is worth several thousand words of analysis. It shows that Tony Blair was more popular than his party (blue line below red). Gordon Brown was too, to start off with, but then tracked the Labour Party closely. Then Ed Miliband opened up a large gap the other way, averaging 18 points behind his party.

Despite recent reporting of how much better Miliband is doing, however, his rating relative to that of the Labour Party has not changed. Labour is more popular, therefore, but its leader is just as much a drag on the party as he ever was.

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• JohnJustice

  A leader can be a drag on his party’s popularity but an asset in other ways e.g. the cohesion he brings to his party and the policies he promotes. I wonder how Attlee would have fared according to Well’s analysis?

  Looking at it the other way, certainly Churchill was much more popular than his party and a fat lot of good that did the Conservatives in the 1945 election. .

• Mombasa69

  And a fat lot Labour did after they won it.

• http://twitter.com/francessmith frances smith

  i think the last labour government, and tony blair, are probably as much of a drag on labour support as ed miliband.

  and its quite likely a good thing that its not too high, labour have a lot of mistakes to apologise for before they are acceptable as an alternative government, and the main problems relate to blair’s love of thatcherism, though had they not embraced the wrong economics its an interesting question as too whether they would have had the same excuses for spending too much money, as people might have been less in need of tax credits and housing benefit if labour had embraced the thatcher legacy with less enthusiasm.

  so lets keep this in perspective.

• Happeh

  Miliband is going nowhere because he said he was going to do something about predatory banksters.

  I haven’t seen any good press about him since he made that statement.

• FergalFury

  Miliband unelectable. Labour merely watered down Tories.

• Bold Debauchery

  Rentoul is a tory in the closet. Time to come out that closet johnny, why you such a hanger?

• takeoman

  History not your strong point is it.?