The Sunday Times YouGov poll today giving the Tories a mere 2% sliver of a lead over Labour shouldn’t be taken at face value, for 3 reasons:

1  Until, or if, it is corroborated by at least two or three other polls, it may simply be a rogue poll outlier.   Clearly there continues to be an edging back towards Labour (or rather away from the Tories), but a swingback from a 10% Tory lead in January to 6% a mere week ago and then to just 2% now is difficult to credit objectively.

2  There are marked differences between nationwide polls and those in marginal seats where the final result will largely be decided.     Labour could still win on the national figures, and yet lose the election in the marginals.

3  The millions that Lord Ashcroft has been piling into the most vulnerable Labour marginals could still have a decisive impact.   It is remarkable that Labour, despite Gordon Prentice MP’s constant chivvying over this scandal of a peer/businessman who is apparently not tax-registered in the UK being allowed to get away with trying to pervert the election though his foreign wealth, has still done next to nothing to stop him.   Presumably New Labour too is more dependent on non-doms than they care to admit.

Perhaps the most curious thing about this latest poll, if there is any truth in it, is why this remarkable collapse in the Tory lead (from 26% less than 2 years ago to 2% now) should have happened.   As so often in politics, the side that benefits may claim the credit for the shift, but big swings in political sentiment nearly always reflect own goals by the losers – and the Tories really have been doing badly recently – constant opportunistic changes of stance and no stability in what they really stand for, if indeed they know.

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