IT'S CLOSE IN THE MOTHER COUNTRY – AT 10:25 A.M. ET:  Britain will hold a general election on May 6th, less than a month from now.  The polls are tightening.  The conservatives seem to have thrown away the lead they've generally enjoyed for many months:

The general election is too close to call, opinion polls suggested Saturday, four days after campaigning officially began for the May 6 vote.

The Conservatives had led Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Labour party for most of the past 18 months but the gap has narrowed in recent months and many commentators are predicting one of the tightest races in decades.

An ICM survey for the News of the World newspaper of 96 key Labour-held marginal seats found Conservative support had dropped four points to 36 percent since January, while Labour was unchanged on 37 percent.

The third Liberal Democrat party surged five points to 19 percent.

The pollsters said a similar result on election day would hand the Conservatives the biggest number of seats in parliament but not enough for a majority, a rare situation in Britain known as a hung parliament.

A number of new national polls supported this view.

An ICM survey for the Sunday Telegraph put the Tories on 38 percent, up one point on a similar poll published on the first day of campaigning on Tuesday. Labour were down three points on 30 percent and the Lib Dems unchanged at 21.

A YouGov poll for The Sunday Times also put the Tories up one point on its poll last week, to 40 percent, but Labour were up three at 32 percent and the centrist Lib Dems were down two on 18 percent.

COMMENT:  We support the Tories, although with less than irrational exuberance.  David Cameron, the Conservative leader, is no Margaret Thatcher, or Winston Churchill.  We don't have to worry about Obama sending a bust of Cameron back to England, as he did with a bust of Winston Churchill, because no one would think of making a bust of David Cameron.

However, he'll do, and is better than the current Labour government.  And a conservative government in London would drive Obama crazy, which is a delightful side benefit.

Of course we'll watch this closely.

April 11, 2010