A cut lead for Boris

As Centre Right reveal, today’s Evening Standard records a cut poll lead for Boris. Their latest YouGov poll has Our Man on 45 percent (down 4 on the last poll); Livingstone on 39 percent (up 3); and Paddick on 12 percent (up 2). Things look rosier when second preferences are allocated – Boris lands 54 percent of the vote, compared to Livingstone’s 46 percent.

The slimmer advantage is testament not only to Livingstone’s resilience, but also to a week in which Boris has seemed oddly deflated. His performance in last week’s Newsnight debate was less-than-stellar, and A.A. Gill’s article in the Sunday Times described the Tory candidate as unusually “glum and uninspiring”. The moral is clear: Team Boris needs to get the old electricity back, lest the slide becomes a plummet.