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It is Budget Eve. He's making a list. He's checking it twice. He's going to cut your duty or excise.

You can barely contain your excitement, I know.

Budgets are always weird events. They're one of the punctuation marks of the Westminster year.

They get journalists and politicians excited. They become promised land moments for governments lost in the political quicksand. On the whole, most of the public tends to be unmoved.

We'll be doing plenty on the economics of that budget tomorrow,

but on the politics, in the last 24 hours,

the political mood has darkened even more for Rishi Sunak and the Conservative Party.

A poll out in the evening standard on Monday evening,

showing the Conservative Party at 20 points.

20 points! This is a party which has never,

during the era of universal suffrage, got less than 30 points at a general election. It was their lowest polling score since the 1970s. And maybe here is a different reason as to why.

The conversation the Conservative party wants to have

and that which the public craves has never been further apart. It's Lewis here. Welcome to the

news agents. The news agents. Right, so later in the show, we'll be heading to Washington

for the latest from John and Emily from Super Tuesday.

But first, this poll, which has set Westminster alight, conservative MPs shaking in their boots.

A poll from Ipsos, as I say for the evening standard, which shows the Tory party at an historical Nadia.

The numbers were Labor 46, Conservatives 20, Reform 14. That's the tour is down

from 27 points in January with the same pollster. It is their lowest level with Ipsos since they

started polling in 1978. So that is lower than under Margaret Thatcher and the poll tax, lower than John Major and Black Wednesday, lower than Theresa May and the Brexit votes which went nowhere, lower than Liz Truss and her self-created financial crisis.

...