The knives are out for Ed Miliband.
A poll by Ipsos MORI found that 54 per cent of Midland voters think Labour should ditch him before the next election.
This puts him in a worse position than Nick Clegg, after 46 per cent of Midland voters said the Liberal Democrats should get a new leader.
And just 28 per cent of Midland voters said they agreed that the Conservatives should change their leader before next year鈥檚 general election.
It鈥檚 not as if the voters are all Tories either, although the Conservatives are in the lead in the Midlands. The poll found 34 per cent of those who say they are certain to vote in the next election reporting that they would vote Conservative if an election was held tomorrow, compared to 29 per cent for Labour, 17 per cent for 海角视频IP, eight per cent for the Liberal Democrats and seven per cent for the Greens.
Nationally, the poll put Labour in the lead with 34 per cent of the vote compared to 31 per cent for the Conservatives.
海角视频IP have the support of 14 per cent of voters, with the Greens and Lib Dems neck and neck on eight per cent.
Incidentally, it鈥檚 worth keeping an eye on the Green Party, who have been largely and perhaps unfairly ignored as the media lavished attention on 海角视频IP.
It seems possible that Greens are benefiting from the fall in the Lib Dem vote.
They are certainly having an impact in Solihull, a key Lib Dem-held marginal seat, where the borough council (which covers a larger area than the Solihull constituency) now has 10 Green members and eight Lib Dems.
But the success of the Greens, and of 海角视频IP, raises a question for Ed Miliband.
The day after the European and local elections in May, he delivered a speech warning: 鈥淢illions of people now feel that our country does not work for them, politics does not listen to them and cannot answer them.鈥
This may be true, but a successful opposition party would be one that convinced voters it was listening to them, and was ready to change the country so that it did work for them.
Tony Blair convinced voters of this in the run-up to the 1997 election, following 18 years of Conservative government.
Mr Miliband appears to be struggling to convince voters that he embodies the changes they want to see.
The good news for Mr Miliband is that there is no clear candidate to replace him.
Asked who should do the job instead, the most popular choice among Midland voters was his older brother David Miliband.
But Miliband senior is not even an MP any more 鈥 and even he is named by only 14 per cent of those surveyed.
In second place comes Ed Balls, the Shadow Chancellor, who would jump at the chance to lead the party.
But just three per cent of Midland voters name him as their choice to become Labour leader.
What has gone wrong for Ed?
He鈥檚 made his share of mistakes. Posing with a copy of The Sun, as part of the paper鈥檚 campaign to publicise its World Cup coverage, enraged some party colleagues.
Black Country MP Tom Watson (Lab West Bromwich East) told a radio interviewer: 鈥淚 think it was a serious mistake and it鈥檚 done a lot of damage to our base.鈥
Mr Watson, a former Labour deputy chair, blamed Mr Miliband鈥檚 PR team, saying: 鈥淚鈥檓 sure they鈥檒l be a lot of shadow cabinet members who are holding their counsel on this, but they are worried about the way Ed鈥檚 office operates, and particularly the press operation.鈥
The problem was twofold. Firstly, The Sun is part of the newspaper empire controlled by Rupert Murdoch, which Mr Watson and some other Labour MPs have been battling against.
Secondly, the paper wrongly blamed Liverpool fans for the 1989 Hillsborough Stadium disaster, when 96 people died 鈥 a claim shown to be entirely false by the report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel 鈥 and antipathy towards The Sun runs very deep in Liverpool to this day (having said that, Mr Clegg and Mr Cameron also posed with copies of the Sun and received little criticism 鈥 maybe Scousers just have lower expectations of them).
What else has gone wrong for Mr Miliband?
YouGov President Peter Kellner, in an article for magazine Prospect, says claims that 鈥淩ed Ed鈥 is too left-wing are wide of the mark.
He says that polls find 鈥淚f anything, voters 鈥 including many Conservative 鈥 are often keener than Miliband on left-wing measures, such as nationalising the railways, curbing bankers鈥 pay and blocking foreign takeovers of British companies.鈥
But there are some charges that do stick. Voters think Mr Miliband 鈥渉asn鈥檛 learned the lessons from the mistakes made managing the Government鈥檚 finances when Labour was in government鈥 鈥 and they are also worried that he is anti-business, according to YouGov鈥檚 polling.
There鈥檚 one glimmer of hope for Ed. He still has 10 months before polling day 鈥 and many voters might still be willing to change their minds about him.
