67% want an election in Brown's honeymoon

A relatively unremarked upon Populus poll for the Daily Politics on Friday actually contained one very significant finding. Assuming Gordon Brown becomes Prime Minister it is quite likely, whatever the polls say, that he will receive some form of honeymoon, however limited, a boost in the polls as those who abandoned Blair give the new Prime Minister a chance.

Obviously it would be in Brown's interests to go to the country during that honeymoon, and secure a majority of his own before having to make any unpopular decisions. The drawback is that conventional wisdom has always been that the public punish politicians for what they see as "unnecessary" elections.

If Brown became Prime Minister with 2 or 3 years of the Parliament still to run, could he reasonably request an immediate dissolution, and would he be punished for it at the polls?

The Populus poll suggests that, no only would be public accept such an election, they'd be positively calling for one - 67% said they thought that such a handover of power between Blair and Brown should be immediately endorsed by a General Election. Only 25% said they would not want the new Prime Minister to face an immediate election.

The poll also found that the present troubles in the Labour party were tarnishing Brown as well as Blair - 62% of people blamed the chancellor as much as Mr Blair for the "apparent splits and disunity" in the party. On the reshuffle, an overwhelming 86% of people thought it was wrong for John Prescott to retain his full perks and salary despite being stripped of a departmental portfolio.

The full tables from Populus's last monthly poll also have few interesting findings. On the preference of government question - asking people if they are satisfied with the government, disatisfied with the government but prefer it to the Tories or disatisfied with the government and would prefer the Tories - the majority of people would still prefer a Labour government. However, there has been a large swing towards the Conservatives on the question - since January the percentage of people satisifed with the government has dropped by 10 points to 16%, and the percentage of people who say they would rather have a Tory government has risen 9 points to 37%.