Business leaders give Brown the thumbs-down

Apologies, after my last post, for the opinion poll one-two punch, but this ComRes effort in today’s Indpendent is well worth pointing out.  Only 28 percent of its business leader respondents say that they’re confident in the Prime Minster’s ability to manage the economy – down from 42 percent in October – and only 16 percent are confident in Alistair Darling.  The corresponding figures for Dave ‘n’ George are 46 and 29 percent respectively.

Off the top of my head, it’s the first time that the Tory pair have had a significant lead on economic credibility for a few months now.  And – although the poll was conducted exclusively among business figures rather than among the general public – they’ll cite it as further support for Cameron’s claim earlier this week that the Tories are “winning the economic argument”.  The real winner from all this, though, could be Vince Cable.  The Lib Dem man comes out on top of both Osborne and Darling, with a 41 percent confidence rating; whilst Nick Clegg scores worse than both Cameron and Brown, with a measly 11 percent.