AS THE general election race heads for the home straight, suddenly the remarkable catching-up job done by John Major is dashed by Tony Blair - who now leads by a distance.

For the latest opinion poll today puts Labour on 56 per cent - double the Tories' rating.

And that 28-point gap is itself double the margin between the parties in another poll just 10 days ago.

That last aspect may serve to show how unreliably wobbly opinion polls can be - as many an actual election result has shown.

But the trend that has kept Labour ahead for so long cannot be denied.

Indeed, the party's standing is at its highest since March and Tony Blair's personal popularity has now soared to a record 51 per cent.

This is glum news for John Major. For, boosted by a successful party conference and, in particular, by the Prime Minister's own cool performance at Bournemouth, Tory MPs returned to Westminster last week with fresh hopes of coming from behind to win a record fifth term.

And they were encouraged in that prospect by an opinion-poll comeback that suggested that the election fight was far from over.

But then comes this poll setback.

And to make it worse, because it was conducted earlier, today's poll does not reflect any of the voters' views on the dreadful spell the Conservatives have suffered in the first week of a new parliament - with the government being wrong-footed and driven to U-turns over gun laws, knife bans and stalking and with Mr Major and Education Minister Gillian Shephard embarrassingly at odds over corporal punishment in schools.

The impact of all that on public opinion may be that there is an even worse ratings slump for the Tories yet to come.

So is it downhill all the way to disaster from now?

Far from it. The home straight to an April or May election may lie just ahead but, in it, the natural Tory voters - the ones who simply cannot change horses - will stop their grumbling and begin coming home.

And the currently gaping opinion poll gap will automatically narrow for that reason alone.

But what other influences might give the Conservatives a spurt as the winning post approaches?

The big one is the economy.

And amid today's opinion poll gloom for the Tories, that factor stands out encouragingly.

For the survey shows that the public is now more confident about the economy, with the number of those expecting the general economic condition of the country to improve being cut from an average of minus-10 in the first half of the year to minus-one now.

On jobs, prices and housing market recovery, there are positive influences at work for the Tories.

In short, the feel-good factor is coming back - even if it is only a feel-a-bit-better factor at the moment. And despite his upward tweak of interest rates yesterday to stop the now-perceived economic upturn overheating and triggering an increase in inflation, Chancellor Kenneth Clarke can be expected to boost it with giveaways in his Budget next month.

True, there is a big gap for Mr Major to close.

And, yes, many voters are in a mood for change.

But elections are decided on the question of how well off the voters feel.

Come the real poll, that crucial factor may make it a much closer contest than it looks now, even though there are perhaps only six months to go before the crunch.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.