Political commentators tend to lapse into pretensions of infallibility. So it is healthy every now and then for one to confess that he hasn’t a clue what is going on.
Such is my position on this finding from our last monthly survey. It was an important question to ask, but the significance of the answer frankly baffles me.
Obviously, for 41 per cent of Party member respondents to say that they don’t have confidence in the Feldman Review, when only slightly more, 43 per cent, say that they do is, on the face of it, rather serious.
But given the reflex suspicion of many activists towards anything CCHQ does, do these findings really reflect anything more or less than that?
After all, a sizeable chunk always have been suspicious and always will be suspicious, and some hark back to a golden age of Party management that, like most golden ages, never existed.
Or it could be that there are a series of Feldman Review-specific reasons – such as suspicion about the Federation idea; or having not heard from CCHQ about the Review at all.
As ever, your guess is as good as mine. You will have noticed that only seven people skipped the question: whatever else may be said of the Review, Party members are interested in it.
We had a piece on the poll near the start of the week on Monday, and we close with this one today. There will be more in our Party Conference newspaper.