The Tory honeymoon dulls, Labour revives even without a leader and the Liberal Democrats are teetering on a precipice: the state of the parties in September 2010

As political trends snap into sharp focus next week with the crowning of the new Labour leader, the party is already level-pegging with the Conservatives again, and the edge has for the moment gone off the Tories’ poll ratings. Meanwhile Patrick Dunleavy and Chris Gilson find that Liberal Democrat support has halved and the party would face electoral extinction if an election was held tomorrow