Tory sleaze?

Yesterday I had a post up on PoliticsHome looking at some of the recent Phi5000 results, specifically Caroline Spelman's ratings.

Since the first revelations about her once paying her nanny from public funds came to light her ratings have slumped. There's nothing particularly surprising about that, bad news story leads to negative perception about that politician. The question is whether it is damaging the wider party, and the answer appears to be yes. Comparing the figures for Spelman to the figures for how people see the Conservative party itself it's clear that at the same time as "nannygate" broke, the proportion of people seeing the Conservatives as "corrupt" rose from 21% to 26%, and has stayed up. It is perhaps unfair to blame it all on her, it was about the same time that the Tory leader in the European Parliament resigned, but it still doesn't look good.