Can Dave stay in the lead?

The election sprint has turned into a marathon. Can Dave keep the lead?

13 October 2007

After a momentous week in politics which has seen a 14 point swing in the polls and an election called off, Fraser Nelson assesses the new political landscape. He warns Douglas Alexander and Ming Campbell to watch their backs in the months ahead and the rest of us not to expect an election until 2009 or maybe even 2010.

All parties will sharpen their election war machines. Coming to the brink of an election forced them to look at their preparedness and discover major weaknesses. Labour is more exposed than it imagined on the issue of immigration, especially in the south of England, and found that the Tories have achieved a substantial lead on the issue without saying much. ‘We can talk far louder about immigration than the Tories can, and we need to use this,’ says one minister. Labour now has time.

Mr Brown can also turn his attention to Lord Ashcroft, the Tory deputy chairman, who was arguably his biggest enemy this time around. The election was cancelled not after Mr Cameron’s speech but when the Prime Minister saw polling data showing that the Tory lead in marginal seats was five points higher than nationally — and that he’d risk a hung parliament by going now. This is the result of Lord Ashcroft’s Target Seat scheme, whereby he has been donating £30,000 of his personal fortune per constituency. This surgical financing has given the Tories a strength concealed by national polling data, the full extent of which Labour discovered only at the last minute.

I am told Mr Brown’s instinct is to outlaw Lord Ashcroft’s scheme, saying it breaks the spirit of campaign funding laws. But if he fails, Labour will need to match the Tory system. Mr Brown had always feared Lord Ashcroft was doing well in the marginals, but had never seen data showing just how well. Until Brown finds a way of thwarting him, there will be no election. This is another reason why this Parliament may run until the summer of 2010. Yet Prime Ministers who postpone elections tend not to win them in the end, as Jim Callaghan and John Major taught us. This is the tantalising knowledge behind the Conservatives’ new optimism. Everything in Mr Darling’s report suggested things will get no easier for Mr Brown once the economy slows, the debt builds and house prices wobble. It is also possible that there is no ‘vision’, that the speech at the Labour party conference was the sum total of his creed — that Brownism is exhausted, even if Brown is not, and that the Tories really will now make the intellectual weather.

To read the Comprehensive Spending Review (http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/pbr_csr/pbr_csr07_index.cfm) is to step into another world, where unemployment is low, where immigration does not feature, where child poverty can be eliminated with tax credits, where crime is falling and the world is safe enough for defence spending to take the smallest slice of the spending cake in modern British history. It could be that the Prime Minister was incarcerated in the Treasury for too long and that this document genuinely reflects how he sees Britain.

Yet Mr Brown has already shown the Tories the dangers of underestimating him. He may be sitting in No. 10 with 100 pages of knockout pre-election policies removed at the last minute from Mr Darling’s speech. He may have damaged his reputation as a Big Clunking Fist, but he has an enviable record as a long-term political survivor. He lost the game of chicken. His mission will now be to draw Mr Cameron into a game of stamina, and see if the Tories can last the pace.

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M. Hristov

October 11th, 2007 12:44pm Report this comment

This is a very interesting analysis. Gordon Brown may have "something up his sleeve" but recent events suggest that he doesn't. I was amazed by the feebleness of his answer on Inheritance Tax. He simply saved married couples a trip to their solicitor, as the same effect could be got by establishing a discretionary trust. This is the second transparently misleading policy within a year. The first being the dropping of the 10% income tax band. I think that this is indicative of two problems. A lack of the imagination needed to produce genuinely new policies and a deteriorating economy.

C.Gatenby

October 12th, 2007 2:52am Report this comment

Brown and his aides' perceptions that Labour had the majoritysupport of the British people can only be described as misguided hubris. The only 'vision' Brown had was a 'clouded' one. His scuttling and bumbling and now an almost 'just-kidding' approach on floating the prospect that he would call a snap poll shows that the next two years is simply delaying the inevitable. The days of Tory glory are at hand.

colin martin

October 12th, 2007 10:29am Report this comment

The odds are against Brown. Every month that goes by the chances for Gov c*ck-ups increase whilst Blair's air-brushing means that Brown gets the blame for every mess since 1997. His only hope - to fool the Tories by going for it in May 2008. He simply said to Andrew Marr "no election" for the "next period": that's commonly understood to mean 28 days.

MK

October 18th, 2007 10:37am Report this comment

Many thanks once again for an erudite article, however the "knife-wielders" got to Ming before you had finished writing! I disagree about the delayed election. John Major probably postponed the 1992 election in which he received the largest number of votes ever cast. Even without the Sun's help he would probably have still won this one(who can fail to remember the Sheffield rally by Kinnock?!). Brown could yet emulate this feat and gain a fourth New Labour term, well that is if the economy does not collapse and the Cameroons decontamination becomes mucky!

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