A con from ConHome

ConservativeHome is at least one political website that doesn't have to worry about its reputation for bias, but it nevertheless surely takes itself sufficiently seriously that it does have cause to worry about its reputation for basic factual accuracy. Or to put it another way, it wouldn't want its partisan spin on a story to be quite so heavy that it goes blatantly and demonstrably way beyond that which the facts will support. How, then, can they justify the following summary of a Scotland on Sunday story in their daily round-up?

"Rejected in his own country - By 54% to 46% Scots say Cameron is better leader than Brown"

Needless to say, 'Scots' say nothing of the sort. The Scotland on Sunday story makes quite plain that the poll sample was restricted to 11 Tory target seats. There can be little doubt that a representative sample of Scotland as a whole would have produced the opposite result, given that the YouGov 'forced choice' question has repeatedly shown that Scots would prefer a Brown-led government to a Cameron-led one. And given that other poll questions regularly demonstrate the deep current unpopularity of both Brown and Labour in Scotland, it goes to show just how irretrievably tainted the Tory brand is in these parts.