Well – there’s a very clear message from the three post-Budget opinion polls! Good to see the Liberal Democrats holding our own – but there’s clearly been a big move from Labour to the Conservatives. At least for the moment – and I say that because there have been some pretty huge swings back and forth in recent times (remember last Autumn?).

I must admit I find it difficult to believe Darling’s Budget is the cause of all this – yes, it was full of missed opportunities and timid half-measures, but above all it was soooooo boring. Boring equals bad in my book when there are huge challenges out there which need to be met, but boring doesn’t normally equal huge swings in public opinion.

So – I wonder if the real story here is the turmoil in the financial markets? A quick look at the figures for how many people of working age are contributing to a private pension, or have a partner contributing to one, puts the total at 17.9 million people (in 2004, see figure 1.8). That’s out of a working age population of 34 million – in other words, it’s more than half of us.

Now – not everyone contributing to a private pension will have been hit by the big falls in the stockmarket, but there seems to me to be a huge political problem for Labour here. If you know you are heavily dependent on the health of the financial markets for your income in retirement (and with the relative falling away of the basic state pension, more and more people feel they are) then big falls in the stockmarket are very bad news – especially the older you are.

And here’s the FTSE100 share index story: it closed today at the levels it was in back in January 1998 – and that’s without allowing for inflation. There have been ups and downs in the meantime, but the bottom line is – for many people their pension situations are now looking far worse than they did only recently. And with that fear and reality of having your pension savaged – an outcome you have to live with all through your retirement – comes a big political price it would seem.