Will Labour's expectation management backfire (again)

As James says, if Labour rack up a double-digit defeat in Crewe and Nantwich, then things might start to look even nastier for Gordon Brown – to the point that he may face a leadership challenge or two. I’m sure Labour will be aware of that, but they’re certainly not saying it. Sam Coates points out over at Red Box that a double-digit defeat is well within the boundaries of what the party is spinning as a “reasonable result”.

It’s clearly a spot of expectation management – take things to their most pessimistic extreme, and then shrug off a heavy defeat as a “good thing”. Problem is, Labour haven’t been too good at managing expectations recently. Remember Tessa Jowell’s prediction that they’d lose 200 seats in the recent local elections? Many laughed that off as overly negative, but it turned out to be not nearly pessimistic enough.

All of which sets up the perfect egg-on-face scenario. If Labour do worse than what they’re calling “reasonable”, then the result for them won’t be bad – it will be disastrous.