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.

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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.