Labour start the year with a 16% lead

Here is a chart of the average polls so far (the average is used so that the sampling errors of different pollsters cancel out):

source

At this point in the 1992 - 1997 Parliament, Blair's Labour Party led in the polls by 23%. Blair then won the 1997 election with 43.2% of the vote to John Major's Conservatives on 30.7% - a 12.5% lead. So by the time the election happened, the lead had narrowed.

Conservatives will be pinning their hopes on the lead narrowing again; especially as they scored only 16% in the June 2019 European Parliament elections, only to win the December 2019 election with 43.6% of the vote.

Inflation is coming down, but the question is, is it falling fast enough for people to notice? Unleaded petrol is now 139p/litre, compared with 165p/litre a year ago. But food prices are still much higher than a year ago.

Canny sceptical voters will judge how well the govt has done on inflation based on their own experience, rather than the official stats.