News reaches The Voice from our network of spies at Labour conference that there are unusual levels of activity.
The big donors are very much in evidence and every effort is being driven towards manic fundraising.
All the usual suspects like agents, PPCs and sitting MPs are being whisked off for readiness training.
Printing companies are taking firm bookings on election material.
The frenzy of activity is such that some highups on the political journalist stage are humming and hahing about whether they should even bother making the journey to Blackpool for the Conservative conference when they should be hovering near the Palace waiting for Gordon and Brenda to conflab on Monday, and set a date within October.
Only time will tell.
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7 Comments
If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a thousand times … June 2009 (60%) or May 2008 (30%).
You should ditch Ming PDQ.
Too late for that. Brown will call the election on Monday and will increase his majority without even breaking sweat.
Gordon Brown would be an idiot to announce an election without checking the reaction to the Conservative Party conference. If Cameron can somehow whip up a frenzy, Brown might not be smiling quite so much.
Let’s hope Brown has some bottle and gets on with it.
Brown would be an idiot to announce an election without checking the reaction to the Conservative Party conference.
Just at the moment, Gordon Brown is acting as though the Conservative party doesn’t even exist. And, do you know, I think might have a point. It will be Monday.
If you are standing on the summit of the Matterhorn there is only one way to go, and it isn’t up.
And the question you have to ask yourself is did you ascend from the Swiss or the Italian side?
If you started from the Italian side, then you only have to go down to Zermatt. If you began your climb on the Swiss side, however, it’s all the way down to the Po.
That is what Mr Brown will have to consider as his activists, buoyed by the chimera of the polls, pressurise him into calling a snap election.
Brown has been boosted by (1) his honeymoon, (2) his conference and (3) Tory disarray (which may only be temporary). A lot could happen in 3 weeks to undo all of that. Brown may be tumbling from the conference podium all the way down the beach.
Look what happened to Harold Wilson in October, 1974. He called an election that he didn’t need to when he was way ahead in the polls. Yet he ended up with just a handful of gains and a wafer-thin majority that was soon eroded by byelection losses.
Oh, and Jeremy Thorpe’s Liberals came from nowhere to just about match their best performance since the 1930s.
Brown is a cautious man. He could have stopped the Iraq war, but didn’t, for fear of losing his position as Chancellor.
I think he will want to occupy No 10 until the last possible moment. But even Brown may not be able to resist what looks like an open door of the bank vault.
But Wilson didn´t have a majority, and the Liberal vote (One More Heave not withstanding) did not advance.
The election is coming in my view. I predict that a withdrawal of British troops comes with it.