A week is a long time in politics
James Forsyth 3:29pm
Rarely has that old cliché seemed so true. On Saturday, Anthony King wrote that “Mr Cameron looks increasingly like a rich man's Iain Duncan Smith” and with the Tories behind by double digits in the polls he had the number to back up his point. Tory modernisers were fretting about how an increased Labour majority and a fourth defeat would dish the party for a generation. While David Cameron was being repeatedly told that nothing short of the performance of his life could pull the party back from the abyss.
A week later and all the pressure is on Gordon Brown. With the Tories now effectively level-pegging, Brown faces the devil of a dilemma. Either he marches his troops back down the hill and announces that there’ll be no early election after all, sacrificing much of his reputation for strength. Or he risks it and goes anyway, knowing that any reduction in the Labour majority would leave him a desperately weak Prime Minister.
Labour has got itself into such a mess through its own arrogance. As Danny points out, they never should have talked so publicly about the possibilities of an election. The other problem is that Brown’s tactics have been far too apparent. There’s a problem when, as John Kampfner notes, it is more obvious—and Brown seems more interested in--how Labour is planning to win the next election than what it is going to do with any fourth term.
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Carroll Powell
October 5th, 2007 3:57pmNever mind what it's going to do with its 4th term. Does it have any idea what to do with its 3rd? I wasn't sure about Cameron (have heard him described as "Willie Whitelaw with an iPod") but after this week, his speech and especially IDS's speech I will give the Tories a try. Labour's proposals for ID cards/national database alone would stop me ever voting for them.
John Duthie
October 5th, 2007 8:57pmAre we right to assume that Gordon Brown sees the next election in the traditional (party)terms we are all clinging to?Let us suppose that his recently stated aim of harnessing talent across the party divide is genuine, born, let us say,of 10years experience, during which the Blair experience has shown that the Labour Party's fatal flawis in its trade Union tendency. We shall never Brown now grasps, reach the sunny uplands until we ditchthe dependency culture. This needs at best a hung parliament or a weak Labour Govt which would leave Brown free to ignore the unions and under the mask of a National Government get on with the counter revolution we must have soon if we are to survive. In this light the only quandary he is facing is how to preerve the fiction that he is a Labour PM
E Graham
October 6th, 2007 12:38amIs Gordon Brown and Labour actually capable of getting on with the business of government and really running the country. Instead of spinning away with the one aim of retaining power. The civil service appears to be ever more politicised to Labour's aim and government by targets produces a nice headline but takes no account of the unintended consequences.