Send not to know for whom the bell tolls...

...it tolls for thee, Cameron:

Labour's lead has risen to 11 points after Gordon Brown's first conference speech as leader, according to Channel 4 News poll. The YouGov opinion poll, which began after Gordon Brown finished his keynote address yesterday, puts Labour on 44 points, eleven points ahead of the Conservatives on 33. The Lib Dems' support is squeezed further, to 13 points.

On Monday a poll of polls in the Independent put Labour on 38 points, a lead of just four points over the Tories, with the Lib Dems on 17. If Labour were to win a similar share of the vote at a general election, they could expect a majority even larger than Blair's landslides in 1997 and 2001.

True, Cameron has yet to give his own big conference speech - that may lower the lead. And it's also true that the polls overstated Labour's lead before the 2005 election. But it must be unheard of for a government to have an 11% lead after ten years in power, particularly ten years as controversial as this government's have often been. Indeed, for those of us who truly loathe David Cameron, the only possible downside is that the polls are now looking so bad, that if he can only keep Labour's majority from getting any bigger, then he may be able to cling on until the election after next.

As for Brown: if he doesn't go ahead and call an October election after this, then I can only conclude that Cameron is in possession of some rather compromising photographs of him!