Does the 'Brown bounce' end here?
Peter Hoskin 9:01am
And so the polls have opened in an election closer to home: the Glenrothes byelection. We should see a result by the early hours of tomorrow morning, but the current expectation is that the SNP will come out narrowly on top. Both the betting markets and party insiders are playing down Labour's chances. Whilst Alex Salmond is sounding typically bullish.
Will a Labour loss mark the end of this latest 'Brown bounce'? Almost certainly - and not least of all because Brown has invested himself, and his wife, so heavily in this campaign. But the question remains of what the rebound will look like. Will Labour's opinion poll rating start plummeting almost instantly? Will talk of Labour leadership challenges start brewing once again?
I have my doubts on both those fronts. Labour's improved poll rating has come on the back of a kinder impression of Brown's 'economic competence'; an impression which won't be shattered by a Labour defeat tonight. While Brown will still be in a much stronger position than he was in a few months ago, and - crucially - his potential challengers in a much weaker position after the coup-that-wasn't.
One senses that a loss in Glenrothes will be quietly accepted by Labour - particularly if they run the SNP close. It's just no longer the flash point it once promised to be. More likely, it will represent the first few drops in a sea of bad stories waiting to fully erode Brown's recent gains.
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Comments
CS
November 6th, 2008 9:55amWill you please pay attention, Peter? Didn't you hear that Gordon Brown's wife is NOT a political prop?
strapworld
November 6th, 2008 10:08amRoll on the sea! Make it a tempest please.
mac
November 6th, 2008 10:13amYes, Labour's campaigning in Glenrothers has been masterful, hasn't it? Ozymandias himself in cloistered meetings with carefully selected forelock-tuggers, badly staged-managed appearances by his wife and now Hull's finest, the great champion of unwanted regionalisation in England. Anything, one suspects, to keep the uninspiring Lindsey Roy from centre stage.
And rely on Scottish Labour to shoot unerringly straight into its own foot - reported in yesterday's Scotsman:
“John Park, the Labour MSP, said: "Unlike the SNP, Labour never takes votes for granted . . .”.
A touch of amnesia over Glasgow East, perhaps, Mr Park?
(http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/glenrothes/SNP-on-a-high-.4660820.jp)
Short the UK
November 6th, 2008 10:29amWise words by Simon Denham in the Telegraph:
'The service sector can be seen as a kind of parasite of itself in that a strong performance generates its own strength as money whirls around creating growth, but the same effect can be seen in reverse. A slowdown has a multiplier effect way beyond the same impact in manufacturing.
With so much of the UK economy now based on the performance of selling, either your own working time (rather than the creation of a physical product) or of actual retail turnover, any weakness in this area might turn out to be a great deal worse than economists are currently discounting.'
The City is forecasting -1% GDP for the UK in 2009.
I think it will be between -3% and -6%.
I hope the Tories are not listening to the plonkers in the City!
Brown bounce is going to turn into the Brown bankruptcy.
The Tories are becoming superfluous in the epic tragedy.
Michael Taylor
November 6th, 2008 10:39amThe conservatives should ask themselves how the 'impression of Brown's 'economic competence'' was erected and sustained in the face of evidence utterly compelling to the contrary. They should also be asking themselves how it is that 'Brown's economic competence' is even sayable, given that much of the rest of the world sees his response to the crisis in financial institutions as bordering on the insane.
Britain's public discourse has degenerated into a bizarre and counterfactual universe almost hermetically sealed against threats from the outside world. How, the conservatives should ask themselves, did this happen?
And they should then, as a matter of urgency, work out what to do about it. Because if Britain's media can orchestrate such trips into lala land as 'Brown's economic competence', it strikes me as very unlikely any politician, of any stripe, will be in a position to deal with the world outside the media bubble. Which is a shame, because that's where the voters live.