For Gods Sake give Dennis Skinner a chance or the new guy John Mann

Finished behind a bloke in penguin costume calling himself Professor Pongoo in Edinburgh

Rubbish. Labour's current lead would see them with 375 MPs vs 197 for the Tories if duplicated at a GE. That's plenty of headroom given the utter incompetence of the Coalition and the defection of right-wing Tories to UKIP.

The HoC graphics I saw gave Labour a theoretical majority of 68 seats

Yes, but I get the impression most usual Tory voters abstained. Also, if they reverse the Granny Tax before a GE they're recover alot. Their core vote is older people who are not poor - ie those targetted by the tax. Most stupid budget decision ever - although they can reverse it.

The Conservatives were in worse position than this in 1981 and also in 1986 (only 11 months before the 87 election where they won a 100 odd seat majority) and then were dead and buried in 1990 during the poll tax riots, in each case they came back to win the General Elections.

With Ed Miliband as Labour leader, one thing is for sure Labour won't win an overall majority.