Cheery silly season puts Tories on even keel

Even if Help to Buy is contributing to a bubble rather than the sensible restructuring of the economy that politicians promised before they started trying to scale that particular mountain, there are still reasons to be cheerful about the economy for the Tories this morning, on top of the delight offered yesterday by Chris Bryant’s antics. The Guardian’s ICM poll finds today that the Conservatives’ approval rating on economic competence has risen to 40 per cent from 28 per cent in June. Labour has only crept up five points in comparison, from 19 per cent to 24 per cent.

There are clearly all sorts of reasons why the party shouldn’t be hanging out the bunting for 2015 just yet (Paul Goodman has a good post on this here). But this poll shows how dramatically the party’s fortunes have turned around from last summer, when everyone was in panic mode and George Osborne was being booed in the Olympic stadium.