Leaders On the nose

While there is little direct comparison between US, British and Australian systems, it is interesting to note relative standings in the polls. The one area which is comparable is that the governments of each of the three countries have staked their fortunes on variations of the neo-con mantras.
They are fiscally monetarist and internationally interventionist; true champions of global economics. A smart politician will quickly tell you that there is only one poll that counts, although, of the three leaders, Blair is clearly in deep water.

BRITAIN: Tony Blair ranks as the most unpopular, British, Labour prime minister since the 1960s, according to an opinion poll in London's Daily Telegraph newspaper.
Just 26 per cent of respondents to the poll said they were satisfied by Blair's performance, one percentage point down from where Harold Wilson stood in May 1968 after a devaluation of the pound sterling.
The survey also indicated that support for the main opposition Conservatives is running at 37 per cent, against 31 per cent for Labour and 17 per cent for the smaller Liberal Democrats. Britain uses a first past the post voting method.

USA:  Disapproval of the war in Iraq appears to be driving the public's low opinion of President Bush's job performance, according to a CNN poll by Opinion Research Corp. released Monday.
The poll, based on interviews of 1,021 adults between Friday and Sunday, found Bush's approval rating was 34 percent -- an uptick of 2 percentage points from the most recent CNN poll in late April.
The president's disapproval rating was 58 percent, down 2 points from the previous poll. Both shifts are within the poll's sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

AUSTRALIA: Labor has now moved ahead of the Coalition by 51 per cent to 49 per cent in two-party-preferred terms. PM, Howard's rating as preferred prime minister fell by seven percentage points to 49 per cent; his disapproval rating leapt by nine points to 44 per cent.
Opposition Labor leader, Beazely’s approval rating continued to drop and at 30 per cent is his lowest ever as Opposition leader.
The Coalition's primary vote has remained steady at 43 per cent, while Labor's has risen by one point to 38 per cent - the same level reached at the 2004 election, which Labor lost.