Conservatives widen lead

Labour's comfortable victory in the Glasgow North East by-election was only a brief respite from the party's woe in the polls, according to a new survey.

The YouGov poll for the Sunday Times found the Conservative advantage over Gordon Brown's party widening by three points over the past month to 14 - enough to deliver a working majority for David Cameron in the upcoming general election.

Conservatives were un-changed on 41 per cent, compared to a similar poll one month ago, while Labour was down three points to 27 per cent and the Liberal Democrats up one on 18 per cent.

The poll found little improvement in economic optimism, but recorded a higher proportion of people (34 per cent) expecting house prices to rise in their area than to fall (12 per cent).

A second poll, by ComRes for the Independent on Sunday, also gave the Tories a 14-point lead over Labour.

The survey put the Conservatives down one point on a month ago on 39 per cent, with Labour down two on 25 per cent and Liberal Democrats down one on 17 per cent. The support lost by the major parties went to the smaller "others", whose combined share of backing went up four points to 19 per cent.

The same poll suggested that Mr Brown may have won a measure of sympathy from voters following the criticism of his hand-written note to the mother of a soldier killed in Afghanistan. Some 60 per cent said that the PM had been treated unfairly on the issue, against 27 per cent who said he had not.