Now Dale backs fixed terms

I am pleased to see that the blogfather himself Iain Dale has now joined Ben Brogan and myself in arguing for a system of four-year fixed-term parliaments.

Iain will certainly be a useful addition to the campaign - especially if, as is rumoured, he succeeds the retiring Ann Widdecombe as Conservative MP for Maidstone and the Weald.

Right decision - but what a bloody mess

For those of us who have always thought of Gordon Brown as a man of principle, who longed for him to replace Tony Blair and usher in a new era of political straight-talking and an end to spin, these are difficult days indeed.

Mr Brown said in his interview on today's Andrew Marr Show, that he wants "a chance to show the country that we have a vision for the future of this country....I want a mandate to show the vision of the country that I have is being implemented in practice."

Having long advocated that he should do exactly that - to lay down some solid achievements and demonstrate that he can renew New Labour in office before seeking the electorate's endorsement - it was impossible to disagree with his reasoning.

But it has taken the Prime Minister so long to reach the right decision, and he has gone about it in such a cack-handed and frankly duplicitous way, that any political dividend he once might have reaped from it has long since dissipated.

Back at the beginning of August, I wrote the following words in my Saturday column in the Newcastle Journal.

"To me, there is an even more compelling reason why Gordon Brown would not risk an election this year, namely that it could cause irreparable damage to the "Brown brand."

The Prime Minister's whole appeal rests on being seen as a man of serious purpose and high principles - not someone who is prepared to cut and run at the earliest opportunity.

Were he to do that in order to take advantage of what is almost certainly a temporary downturn in Tory fortunes, he would risk destroying that reputation at a stroke.

A snap election would also demonstrate a complete lack of faith in his own ability to sustain the "Brown bounce" - or at least the confidence and trust of the electorate - beyond some vaguely defined honeymoon period."

Well, the only thing I got wrong there was my assessment that it would take a snap election to damage the Brown brand. He's actually managed to damage it - possibly irreparably - without having one.

Had he ruled it out back then, he would, I believe, have even further enhanced his then sky-high reputation, by being seen to do the statesmanlike thing rather than attempt to press home a short-term tactical advantage.

But to have let the speculation ride through the conference season, and then only call a halt to it once it became clear Labour was actually behind in the opinion polls was not statesmanlike, merely shoddy.

Which is why his words on the Andrew Marr Show this morning - though impossible to disagree with on the surface - ring so very, very hollow.

The first thing Brown should do now is get himself some new advisers. Who thought it was a good idea to stage a love-in with Margaret Thatcher? Or to employ as an adviser a Tory MP who had been branded a racist? Or to fly to Basra to announce a troop withdrawal in the middle of the Tory Conference? And whose bloody silly idea was this spoof election in the first place?

If I sound angry, it's because I am. Those of us who supported Gordon to become Labour leader, who longed to see him replace the lying phoney who preceded him, feel justifiably let down by all this.

I still believe Gordon Brown can go on from this to be a great reforming Prime Minister. But he now has to to convince the uncommitted all over again that he is more than just another shallow opportunist and cynical purveyor of spin.

It will be no easy task.

We need more time

Now is not the time for a general election, not for Gordon Brown, not for David Cameron, certainly not for Ming Campbell. But more importantly not for the country. I explain why in my Saturday Column in today's Newcastle Journal which is reproduced in full below.

****

In the long history of British political conferences, seldom has a party leader faced a more difficult task than the one faced by Tory leader David Cameron this week in Blackpool.

With the polls showing Labour up to 11 points in the lead and speculation about a snap election reaching near-boiling point, Mr Cameron somehow needed to convince Gordon Brown to hold off from going to the country.

For sheer brinkmanship, the Tory leader’s call for the Prime Minister to “bring it on” is not quite up there with “Go ahead, punk, make my day” – but it’s not far off.

Will Gordon call his bluff? We will know soon enough – but if Mr Cameron has managed to persuade him to think twice, it will go down as one of the greatest acts of political escapology in modern times.

For make no mistake, whatever Mr Cameron may say in public, he and his party do not want an election on November 1 or 8 – or indeed at any point until next spring at the earliest.

There may still be very real doubt over whether an election held now would enable Mr Brown to increase Labour’s majority, which as I have argued all along, should be the determining factor for him in whether to hold one.

But of one thing there is very little doubt – that if an election were held now, the Conservatives would not win it.

Under our skewed electoral system, they need to be 8-10 points ahead of Labour – as they were before Mr Brown took over – before they can even think of securing an overall majority.

So Mr Cameron’s principal aim throughout this conference week has been to buy time – time to enable him to get his party’s policies in order, time to allow the Brown Bounce to wear off.

Yesterday morning’s polls, most showing Labour’s lead has fallen sharply to around 3-4pc, certainly suggest he might have done enough.

Mr Brown and his closest aides are expected to make a final decision over the course of this weekend, but any sensible reading of the situation would suggest the polls are far too volatile for him to risk it.

This is no more than is to be expected. The wiser heads among the political commentariat have long been arguing that you need three or four weeks after the end of the conference season for public opinion to settle down.

So if Mr Cameron has indeed succeeded in postponing the election, how did he do it? Well, with a mixture of skilful party management, sheer oratorical bravura – and a single very clever policy initiative

The Tories arrived in Blackpool in a state of some chaos, with policy commissions busily contradicting eachother and Old Right figures such as Lord Tebbit comparing Mr Cameron unfavourably to Mr Brown.

To have managed to impose some discipline on that rabble, while also extracting some sort of coherent programme from the welter of new policy ideas, was no mean feat.

It does not mean the Tories are necessarily ready for government, but they at least looked united and sensible, two of the key prerequisites for a party wishing to be taken seriously by the voters.

As for Mr Cameron’s keynote speech on Wednesday, he showed again that in terms of personal charisma, he is streets ahead of anyone currently operating in British politics.

But for the first time, I think he also demonstrated that there might be more to him than just a slick PR man.

I particularly liked the way he tackled head-on the “Tory toff” jibes about his upbringing, saying that it was because he had such a “fantastic” education that he wanted the same for all children.

The note of optimism – “you can get it if you really want it” – may have seemed clichéd to some, but is very necessary in a political culture that is becoming corroded by cynicism.

But it was not Mr Cameron who unveiled the most significant policy initiative in Blackpool. That came in the week’s other big speech, from the Shadow Chancellor George Osborne on Monday.

However much Labour may quibble about how it is to be paid for, his announcement that a Conservative government would raise the threshold of Inheritance Tax to £1m is a surefire vote winner- and Mr Brown knows it.

As I have noted previously, the rise in house prices and consequent increase in the value of estates have turned this into a grossly unfair tax that now affects a large number of ordinary families.

If the Tories really have turned the polls around this week, I believe it was this, more than Mr Cameron’s speech, which will have really forced the voters to sit up and take notice.

So where to from here? Well, it’s been an inconclusive conference season in my view, with no clear winners and, with the possible exception of Sir Menzies Campbell, no clear losers.

That seems to suggest to me that the time is not right for the country to make an informed choice about who governs it for the next five years.

Sure, Gordon Brown has made a good start as Prime Minister, dealing capably with a series of crises and commanding the centre ground, but it is still too early to make a real assessment of his performance in the job.

In particular, we need to see if the man who announced an Iraq troop withdrawal in a bid to disrupt the Tory conference really can live up to his promises of “new politics” and an end to spin.

As for David Cameron, the noted commentator Simon Jenkins wrote on Thursday that he looks like a man who will be Prime Minister one day – but not yet. I would go along with that.

His modernisation programme is still only half-complete and we need to see if he can follow-up the initiative on Inheritance Tax with other concrete and coherent policy pledges.

Speaking both as a commentator and as a voter, I hope we will be given the time we need to see how these two men continue to perform in their respective roles before being forced to choose between them.

But will we get it? Only one of them knows the answer to that.

....and could Brown survive the loss of his majority?

If the general election is finally called next week - and a growing number of pundits now think it won't be - there seem to me to be three plausible scenarios as to the possible outcome, as follows:

(i) Labour manages to hang on to its existing majority, there or thereabouts. I am as convinced as I can be that they will not increase it significantly, for the simple reason that David Cameron is not Michael Howard.

(ii) Labour loses between 15-25 seats and the Brown premiership descends into a John Major-type situation, constantly at the mercy of a few rebels while the momentum is with the opposition.

(iii) Labour loses its overall majority altogether while remaining the largest single party in a hung Parliament. Though this is the least likely outcome of the three, it remains a distinct possibility.

So following on from the previous post, which looked at Dave Cameron's chances of surviving a Tory defeat, what would happen to Gordon if scenario (iii) were actually to come to pass?

Well, he'd have to go, wouldn't he. Apart from anything else, he would look a complete and utter plonker for having squandered a majority of 66 with two and a half years of the Parliament left to go. His judgement and reputation as a supreme political strategist would be shot to pieces - for ever.

A hung Parliament with Labour as the largest party would almost certainly mean a coalition with the Lib Dems - but even if Sir Menzies Campbell was content to serve under his old pal Gordon, his MPs would not let him.

No, the price of such a coalition would be that Gordon would have to fall on his sword, with a new government formed under a caretaker Prime Minister while the Labour Party chose its new leader - who might of course turn out to be the careteaker leader himself.

So who would it be? Well, this is where the speculation about a Year of three Prime Ministers gets really interesting.

People have lazily assumed that if we are to have a third premier this year, it will be David Cameron, but given our skewed electoral system this is highly unlikely - which is why whatever he may say in public, Dave is still desperate for Gordon to back out.

No, if there is to be a third Prime Minister of 2007, it will be someone else entirely - probably a senior Cabinet minister who will be tasked with leading Labour and the coalition through the choppy waters that would follow Brown's inevitable demise.

Step forward, Mr Jack Straw.

Could Cameron really survive an election defeat?

Amid the ongoing welter of election speculation, one piece that caught my eye today was from Simon Jenkins in the Guardian, in which he argues that while David Cameron's Blackpool speech showed him to be a Prime Minister in the making, he is not yet one that is ready to take over the job in less than a month's time.

It's an interesting thesis in that it rests on the idea that Cameron could lose a general election which the Tories were once expected to win comfortably yet still survive as party leader.

But is he right? Well, history - particularly that of the Tory Party - would strongly suggest otherwise.

The last party leader to be given a second chance after losing one election was Neil Kinnock (1987 and 1992), but he was leader of the Labour Party which traditionally has a more tolerant attitude to defeat. The only post-war Tory leader to be given two bites at the cherry was Edward Heath (1966 and 1970), and this may have been influenced by the fact that he had only been in the job a year when the first of those contests took place.

There is a common consensus that had she lost the 1979 election, even Margaret Thatcher would have been swiftly despatched in favour of a more traditonal, reassuring figure like Jim Prior or Francis Pym.

So could Cameron really buck this trend? Well, I suppose it depends partly on the alternatives.

Some on the right still hanker after a David Davis leadership, but he will be in his 60s by the time the election after next comes round. Liam Fox is the likeliest right-wing challenger, but he has always seemed to me to lack ruthlessness.

Meanwhile William Hague has said repeatedly he does not want the job, certainly not while the party is still in opposition. Chris Grayling is the dark horse, but he scarcely rivals Cameron in the charisma stakes.

It will also, of course, depend on the closeness of the result. If Cameron can succeed in turning Gordon Brown into a John Major figure, dependent on a wafer-thin majority and ever-fighting to beat back the tide of the inevitable Tory advance, then I guess he may well continue in the job.

But even then, I don't expect it will be without a fight.

Brave call

Right or wrong, Benedict Brogan deserves a medal for bravery for this.

Farewell Blackpool

David Cameron's closing speech in Blackpool today - a storming success by all accounts - marked the end of an era in British political conferences, with none of the major parties due to return to the old Lancashire seaside down.

Most politicians and journalists will no doubt be relieved about that. Few ever had a good word to say about the place. But I have always begged to differ.

Of the other main conference venues, Bournemouth was ruined by the dismal press facilities - they used to put us in a windowless underground car park, in seats so uncomfortable that one year I did my back in and spent the next fortnight practically unable to move. And Brighton was wrecked by the security arrangements - the configuration of the Brighton Centre meant the entire seafront had to be sealed off and after-hours access was inevitably limited to a roundabout route to the rear.

I always had a better time in Blackpool. I found a good little hotel, the Tregenna, within walking distance of the conference centre which I used to stay in year after year, and for mealtimes instead of being forced to eat pretentious, overpriced food I would tend to frequent a marvellous chippie on the outskirts of the town centre.

The best thing about Blackpool, though, was the Number Ten Bar at the Imperial Hotel, the atmosphere of which was like nothing else - maybe because it lent itself more to the noble art of beer-drinking rather than the copious wine-quaffing you were likely to see in Brighton's Grand or Bournemouth's Highcliffe.

Even though the hotel itself is unlikely to play host to a conference again, I hope someone preserves that bar for posterity.

Update: For a more mainstream view of Blackpool, read Iain Dale's Spectator Diary

Support grows for fixed terms

I have already made clear my own view that it's high time we moved to a system of four-year fixed-term parliaments in this country, so I was interested to see that Mail political editor and top blogger Ben Brogan shares this view.

"Once all this nonsense is over, I'm going to start campaigning for fixed terms," he says on his blog today, in the context of the ongoing election speculation.

Meanwhile Tory grandee Sir Malcolm Rifkind had another solution to what he termed the "constitutional outrage" of an election held two years into a parliament.

He joked: "I just wish the Queen would say 'you cannot have one'. It would probably be the end of the monarchy but what a way to go!"

Will Brown trump Osborne

Shadow Chancellor George Osborne's announcement that a Conservative government will raise the inheritance tax threshold has predictably gone down a storm in Blackpool, and interestingly, Labour's initial attack seems focused on how the tax cut will be paid for rather than the idea itself.

It begs the question once again in my mind whether the Tories are being too cautious, and whether Gordon Brown's response will now be to pledge to scrap inheritance tax altogether, or, at the very least, exempt all family homes from its ambit.

Restricting inheritance tax to a "millionaires only" tax is a surefire voter winner with the aspirational middle-classes the Tories need to win back, and Brown is far too smart not to realise this.

The Prime Minister has already shown himself a past master in the art of political cross-dressing. Surely this is a case for more shameless stealing of the Tories' clothes.

No more sunshine kid

David Cameron rightly came in for a fair amount of ridicule last year for using the phrase "let sunshine win the day!" in his opening conference speech.

But as Iain Dale reports today, what the activists want to hear from him this year is "a bit of Donner und Blitzen. No sunshine thank you very much."

This apparently light-hearted comment exemplifies the change in strategy that has occurred in the past few months as the Tories realised they had seriously underestimated Gordon Brown.

Cameron thought he could win the next election simply by demonstrating he was the "sunnier" character of the two. He has since discovered that the British electorate - or at least those bits of it that talk to opinion pollsters - really aren't that shallow.

Don't do it, Gordon

Other siren voices, besides mine, who are now counselling against an early election include Martin Kettle and The Observer Leader Column.

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.

***

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.

And here's who I voted for....

Now that the Great List has finally been published, here's a reminder of who I voted for, with their positions in Iain Dale's poll in brackets.

1 Political Betting (5)
2 Iain Dale's Diary (1)
3 Liberal England (53)
4 Bloggerheads (57)
5 Benedict Brogan (14)
6 Chicken Yoghurt (29)
7 Guido Fawkes (2)
8 Dizzy Thinks (3)
9 UK Daily Pundit (79)
10 Skipper (105)
11 Rachel From North London (49)
12 Tom Watson (22)
13 Nick Robinson (8)
14 Mars Hill (87)
15 Little Man in a Toque (88)
16 Nether-World (277)
17 Obsolete (195)
18 ConservativeHome (4)
19 Kate's Home Blog (Not listed in Top 500 - shame!)
20 Newer Labour (73)