No fear of the tide turning in Britain

After five years in the wilderness, the Conservatives must be hoping things are looking up.

Five years into the Labour governments of 1945, 1964 and 1974 the Tories were just months away from a return to power.

Today, as Iain Duncan Smith sits down in Washington with his fellow centre-Right leaders from around the world, many of them recent election victors, he may well feel entitled to a dose of optimism.

The case is not hard to make. The latest poll, by YouGov for the Mail on Sunday, shows Labour below 40per cent for only the second time since Tony Blair became party leader. (The other time was a brief period during the petrol crisis in September 2000.) The Tories are within six points of the Government - a far, and happier, cry from the huge deficit they faced at the same point in Labour's first term in office.

Around the world, the Left is also in retreat. Once again centre-Right parties and ideas are in the ascendant. Today's meeting, hosted by the President of the world's most powerful country, testifies to that.

That is the mantra. The truth is less comforting. Yes, Labour's lead is only six points; but the Government is still more popular than the opposition. In fact, at 33 per cent, support for the Tories is no higher than it was in last year's general election.

That is not all. Governments are seldom ahead in the polls one year after their election victories. The Tories won four elections between 1979 and 1992; 12 months after each, their leads had disappeared completely. On the first three occasions, they managed to recover to win the following election. In more than half a century of polling before the Blair era, only Harold Macmillan in 1960, and Harold Wilson in 1965, enjoyed clear leads 12 months after leading their parties to election victories.

What, though, of the deeper argument, that the tide of history is turning in favour of the centre-Right? This is a superficially attractive view. Centre-Left politicians have been ejected from office in recent times in Spain, Italy, Portugal, Austria, Holland, Israel, Australia, the United States and, now, France.

Read that list fast and without thinking too hard, and it looks impressive. Look a little closer, however, and the cracks in the varnish become all too visible. The United States? George Bush won fewer votes than Al Gore. The President is in office thanks to Florida's antiquated election rules and creaky voting machines and a perverse 5-4 ruling by the Supreme Court. Meanwhile he must contend with a Senate back under Democrat control.

Israel? Not all Conservatives would wish to sail in the same political boat as Ariel Sharon and the Likud Party. Italy? That means siding with the appalling Silvio Berlusconi. Austria? Holland? In both countries the Centre-Right relies on the support of the Far-Right to hold power.

As for France, let us skip lightly past Jacques Chirac's record of alleged corruption and inspect the policies that his supporters will pursue, now that they are certain of a comfortable majority.

Even if they carry out their promise to cut taxes and liberalise the labour market, the French government will still control more than 45 per cent of the country's economy, and most workers will still enjoy the legal right to work no more than 35 hours a week. Any British politician who advocated such goals would be dismissed as a throwback to Old Labour, rather than hailed as an exemplar of new thinking on the centre-Right.

That is not to say that the centre-Left across the world is in wonderful health. Plainly it has suffered some severe blows, and risks descending, as have France's socialists, into a destructive internal feud over whether the Left's accommodation with market forces has been too slow or too fast. Meanwhile they have allowed a motley collection of right-of-centre politicians with widely differing ideological views and ethical standards to benefit from the Left's weaknesses.

To describe this as a new tide of history and to predict its imminent arrival on the shores of Britain is to make a double mistake. There is no such tide, and Labour is not yet heading for defeat, even after its last two miserable weeks.