Gordon's dilemma

As promised, here's my Labour conference round-up as published in this morning's Newcastle Journal, together with some further reasons why Gordon shouldn't risk it.

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Early in his speech to the Labour Party conference on Monday, Prime Minister Gordon Brown dropped what, in normal times, I would have interpreted as a clear hint that he was not going to call an autumn election.

He said: “When people ask me: ‘Would you recommend this job to anyone else?’ I reply: “Not yet’.”

Those two little words “not yet” would ordinarily have been a dead giveaway. But these are not normal times, and that was not the spin that was being applied in Bournemouth.

Instead, Brown’s closest allies – notably Schools Secretary Ed Balls – have spent the week pointedly refusing to dampen the election fever, and on occasions, actually stoking it.

Soon, the waiting will all be over. In the next ten days or so, possibly sooner, Mr Brown will have to decide whether to go for it, or kill the speculation by ruling out an election for the foreseeable future.

Having made clear my view some weeks ago that he would not call one, it could be egg-on-face time for yours truly - but that comes with the territory for a political pundit.

My underlying reasoning hasn’t changed – that the public doesn’t really want an election now, and that Mr Brown will struggle to increase Labour’s majority beyond 66.

I still hold to that view. But it is beyond dispute that, in the course of the past week or so, the thinking at the top of the Labour Party has shifted in the direction of an early poll.

Monday’s speech, on the face of it, didn’t sound like an electioneering one. There was no political knockabout, and the other party leaders were not even mentioned by name.

With its strong religious overtones and frequent references to his early life in Kirkcaldy, it came over more as a personal credo, a statement of what makes Mr Brown the man he is.

But at another level, the speech was deeply political. Although David Cameron was not mentioned by name, there can be no mistaking the fact that he was its prime target.

Not only did the speech see Mr Brown continuing to crawl all over the Tories’ traditional territory, it also presented an antidote to Mr Cameron’s “broken society” rhetoric.

Over the past year, the Tory leader has based his whole strategy on the premise that social issues, rather than economics, will be uppermost in the voters' minds come the next election.

But on Monday, Mr Brown made clear that he is quite happy to fight on that ground, setting out his own distinct vision of the kind of society he wishes to create over the coming years.

Of course, it would not have been New Labour if it had not been stuffed full of re-heated policy announcements.

To take one example, my wife, who recently gave birth to our second child, is already in the middle of the nine months' paid maternity leave that Mr Brown “announced” on Monday.

But what was both new and potentially devastating for the Conservatives was the way in which Mr Brown weaved such initiatives together in a convincing overall narrative of his government's moral purpose.

It was this moral dimension which provided the common thread between policies which might otherwise appear to have come from opposite ends of the political spectrum.

So for instance, the Prime Minister spoke of his desire to ensure that young people from low income families will no longer have to pay to go to university – an ideal that might be said to be rather leftish in nature.

At the same time, he espoused supposedly “right wing” ideas such as ensuring that immigrants who sell drugs or carry guns will be thrown out and shops that sell alcohol to under-18s closed down.

So if the speech was, by common consent, judged a success, why do I still think Mr Brown shouldn’t call an election?

Well, one factor that has received little discussion in the national press thus far concerns regional disparities in voting patterns, and the fact that there is no longer any such thing as a uniform national swing.

I would confidently predict, for instance, that in the North-East, Labour will do better in terms of its overall share of the vote under Mr Brown than it did under Mr Blair in 2005.

But with 28 out of 30 seats in the region already in the bag, that will not be a lot of good to him if Labour’s vote falls slightly in London and the Midlands, where there are many more Tory-Labour marginals.

The real hot chestnut for Mr Brown here is his own backyard of Scotland, where the Scottish National Party is still riding high following its success in May’s devolved elections.

Scotland, even more so than the North-East, is Labour’s real powerbase, and the loss of 10-20 seats there would make it nigh-on impossible for Mr Brown to increase his overall parliamentary majority.

In other words, polls showing Labour leads of up to 11pc do not by any means tell the full picture, and may even present a highly misleading one.

Thursday night’s by-election result in Sunderland, which saw the Tories winning a seat from Labour on a 3.7pc swing, may be no more reliable as a national indicator – but at least those were real votes.

At the start of the week, it was still possible to believe that the election talk was merely a tactic, designed both to wind up the Tories and keep the left on their best behaviour.

It seems to have gone beyond that now. Plans are being laid, staff recruited, loyalist ministers like Barbara Follett given the green light to speculate openly.

If Gordon does go for it, I would rate it the biggest political gamble since Margaret Thatcher despatched the Falklands task force in 1982 – one which could either lead on to glory, or career-ending humiliation.

Get it wrong, and Mr Brown’s long-awaited first annual conference speech on Monday will also prove to have been his last.

The perils of political punditry

Having said on more than one occasion that Gordon Brown would not call an election this autumn, it's looking increasingly like it could be egg-on-face time for me if Gordon decides to go for it over the course of this weekend.

That said, it looks like I am in good company. As BBC political editor Nick Robinson admits on his blog today, he himself initially described talk of an early election as tosh.

I took the view I did because I do not believe that the public wants an election at this stage, and that against that backdrop Brown will struggle to increase Labour's majority beyond 66. I still hold to that, and agree wholeheartedly with Guido that 3.5 - 1 against the Tories being the largest single party represents good value at the moment.

I'll be saying a bit more about why in my weekend column which will will be posted here tomorrow after it has appeared in the Newcastle Journal and Derby Evening Telegraph.

The election: what Gordon should do.

I don't know whether Gordon Brown is going to call an autumn general election, and if the amount of bet-hedging and fence-sitting going on in Bournemouth amongst my former colleagues is anything to go by, neither does anyone else. In this post, however, I set out my admittedly rather idealistic view of what I think he should do.

We already know enough about Gordon's plans for his premiership to know that constitutional reform - what he termed democratic renewal in his speech on Monday - is going to figure highly. In his speech he gave us one specific commitment, namely to an elected House of Lords, but I am sure there will be more to come.

Mr Brown has also made it clear, in his inaugural Commons statement back in July, that he sees divesting himself of power as a part of that agenda, for instance, the right to declare war or appoint bishops.

Well, writing in today's Guardian, Jonathan Freedland identifies another such reform that is now urgently required - the introduction of fixed-term parliaments and the end of the Prime Ministerial power to go to the country as a time of maximum advantage.

Freedland says in his piece: "British elections are running races in which one of the contestants get to fire the starting gun. So when Gordon Brown finally names the date, let him also vow to be the last Prime Minister to exercise that privilege."

My only criticism of Freedland here is that he doesn't quite go far enough. Were Brown to follow his advice to the letter, he would still be free to decide the election date at a time of maximum advantage to Labour while seeking to deny that power to his successors, which would be rightly viewed by the public as a monumental hypocrisy.

Brown should therefore announce that there is going to be no election this autumn, that he will legislate in the forthcoming session for the introduction of fixed term four-year parliaments, and that in the spirit of this, there will not be another general election until May 2009 - four years after the last one.

I personally think the public would thank him for sparing them an unnecessary trip to the polls, but even if he were to lose, and had to spend the rest of his life listening to people saying "you should have gone in autumn 2007," his place in history as one of the great reforming premiers would be absolutely assured.

How I wish I'd been there....

My conferencing days are well and truly over and I rarely find myself feeling wistful about the annual booze-sodden seaside jaunts...but I would have paid good money to watch Blair-worshipping policy wonk Darren Murphy fall over unaided during a late-night bar-room contretemps with arch-Brownite Ian Austin, as reported by Hugh Muir in today's Guardian Diary.

This is getting silly

As if political cross-dressing had not gone far enough in recent weeks, with Dave trying frantically to be like Tony but not Maggie, and Gordon trying frantically to be like Maggie but not Tony, we now have the spectacle of Norman Tebbit simultaneously lionising Gordon and rubbishing Dave.

Surely all we need now to complete the circle is for Tony Benn to hail Cameron as the new, authentic voice of democratic socialism.

The next leadership race starts here?

When I first spotted this post on Ben Brogan's blog earlier today I initially thought it was a bit frivolous of him to start speculating about leadership "beauty contests." But in fact Brogan has a very good point.

Despite Gordon Brown's current dominance of the political scene, it should not be forgotten that this could easily be both his first and last conference as Labour leader.

As Brogan points out: "If Brown listens to the hotheads, goes for November, and gets it wrong, we really will be looking for a change candidate."

So just for the sake of argument - and because no party conference would be complete without a bit of leadership speculation - who might that candidate be?

Well, as Iain Dale notes, frontrunner David Miliband has just bored the delegates into slumber for the second year running, although the content of his speech today was largely spot-on.

Brogan himself speculates that energetic Ed Balls could emerge as a runner, although I have long believed that his wife, Yvette Cooper, is really the more talented politician in the Balls household.

Health Secretary Alan Johnson would certainly stand, but at 56 may be considered too old for a gruelling four or five years of opposition before he would have a chance to unseat Prime Minister Cameron in 2011/12.

In my view, the dark horse could well be Jacqui Smith, who has made a great start as Home Secretary and has impeccably New Labour credentials. It will be interesting to see how her speech goes down later in the week.

On a related point, does anyone know why Brown moved the leader's speech to Monday? I guess he must have had his reasons but it's turned the whole of the rest of the conference into a largely meaningless anticlimax.

The conference always tailed off after Tuesday, but I reckon that the extra day's build-up to the old Tuesday afternoon slot was worth at least an extra day's front-page headlines for Labour.

A bad omen?

Not sure if anyone else has spotted this yet.....but who was the last party leader to use the words "I won't let you down" during his inaugural conference speech?

Answer: It was Charles Kennedy, at the Lib Dem conference in Harrogate, in 1999.

Brown's moral society

He didn't once mention him by name. But make no mistake, David Cameron was the real target of this afternoon's big speech by Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

For weeks, Cameron has been banging on about the "broken society," rightly calculating that social issues, rather than economics, will be uppermost in the voters' minds come the next general election, and believing this will give him the crucial advantage over a Prime Minister still perceived by some as no more than a dour financial manager.

Well, in this afternoon's speech, Brown made clear that if that's where Cameron wishes to stage the election battle, he will be there waiting for him. For this was a speech that was, more than anything, about society - and about Brown's vision of the kind of society he wishes to create over the next few years.

In policy terms, much of it was not new. To take one example, my wife is already in the middle of the nine months' paid maternity leave Brown re-announced this afternoon. But the way he weaved such initiatives together in a convincing overall narrative of his government's moral purpose was both new and potentially devastating for the Conservative opposition.

Central to the speech was Brown's own "moral compass" - something his predecessor was often justifiably accused of lacking. Without being at all preachy about it - New Labour still doesn't officially "do God" - the Prime Minister left no doubt about the importance of his own Christian convictions in determining Labour's future policy direction.

The speech was peppered with Biblical references, from ensuring all children are given a chance to use their gifts (the Parable of the Talents) to his pledge to "honour those who raised us" (the Fifth Commandment.)

This moral dimension is the common thread between, for instance, ensuring that young people from low income families will not have to pay to go to university, and ensuring that immigrants who sell drugs or carry guns will be thrown out and shops that sell alcohol to under-18s closed down.

All in all, I thought it was one of the cleverest leader's speeches I have heard. By not even mentioning the other two parties or their leaders, Brown once again succeeded in presenting himself as a national leader above petty party politicking, the personification of a new style of politics.

Most pleasing to me personally was his announcement that an elected House of Lords would be a Labour manifesto commitment. This is absolutely the right way to proceed with this vexed issue, as it will mean that under the Salisbury Convention, the unelected peers will have no alternative but to vote for their own abolition.

As to the great unanswered question - will there be an autumn general election? - the subliminal message of the speech was, surely, is that Brown is getting on with the job of governing. But at the same time, there are clearly people in Bournemouth who are continuing to stoke up the election talk - which may be real, or may just be a tactic to wind up the Tories and keep the unions and the left on their best behaviour.

It did not, to me, come over as an electioneering speech. But as I am not in Bournemouth and don't know what's being said behind the scenes to those journalists and bloggers who are, I can't be entirely sure that my instincts are correct.

What I am sure of, though, is that Brown knows exactly the ground on which he wishes to fight Cameron, and that he is absolutely confident of success.