Lord Who?

Considering the furore surrounding William Hague's position on Lord Ashcroft, this morning's poll results for the Tories are quite good.

Hague, speaking to the BBC's The World Tonight, seemed to distance himself (and by inference) the party from their wealthy donour - stating that he had 'no knowledge' of Lord Ashcroft's 'non-dom' status. Hague originally nominated Ashcroft for a peerage in 2001. 

Yet, despite this, this morning's YouGov poll places the Tories in a 'No Change' positon of 38 (from yesterday's poll), Labour suffer a point loss at 32 and the Lib Dems return to form at 19 (+3) after yesterday's slump to 16. 

This suggests three interesting points:

1. The Tory brand is relatively undamaged by the Ashcroft affair - suggesting the public simply don't care about the tax status of a non-dom, or, perhaps more worringly for the Tories, such behaviour doesn't come as a surprise. Landed elites anyone?

2. The affair points towards a wider distrust in politics, with both Labour and the Conservative's having suffered in recently days and weeks from a number of heavy hitting affairs. In effect, Darling's admission of bullying in Downing Street and Ashcroft's tax dodging have cancelled one another out. 

3. We are still heading for hung parliament territory - with both the Tories or Labour failing to open up a substantial lead despite each others respective problems.