A date in the diary?
Just a thought on those early election rumours floating around again, since the leaked document from Lord Gould was splashed on the front of .
Should we really take them seriously tonight? Nick blogged a while back that in his view, the notion of Gordon Brown going to the polls as early as autumn was tosh. A conversation I've just had with a very senior Labour source suggests strongly that's still the case. And there's a simple reason why.
Labour may be ahead in the polls for now, and Gordon Brown has been giving the impression at least of announcing lots of policy. But that third essential ingredient you need to fight a campaign, lots of cold hard cash, is missing. Until that begins to change, don't think about even penciling in a date for an election within the next year.
I'm 
Comments
Thanks for the heads up.
Lord Gould is a sound strategist but the Mirror's chest beating, and fanning of flames from the peanut gallery is so much fluff. Simply, Prime Minister Brown would be a fool to lock himself to a rigid deadline, and the hopefuls who wish to promote General Election fever are doing it just to get attention. It has as much substance as Boris Johnson's phoney war.
A more insightful and relevant article is the Guardian's piece on Prime Minister Brown's . Matthew d'Ancona comments: "One of the lessons he says he has learned in the past few weeks is that things happen, events come and go, you have to keep your focus on the fundamentals. Not quite que sera, sera, but as close as this PM will ever get to it." He then goes on to expand on how Prime Minister Brown was inspired by "Who Paid the Piper?"
The Buddhist concept of "no-mind" and Daoism's "invest in loss" can clearly be seen here. I've commented ad-nauseam on this for months. One can get lost in the headlines but the success of the recent summit and the more buoyant support among the local electorate add weight to this. It's hard to explain but people are capable of discovering this for themselves.
Stop competing. Let go. It can't get any easier.
So what do you think Brown's money raising ability is. 10 years of working the city and buisness should have fattened up his phone book with some supporters don't you think?
Barring a war or national disaster,and assuming the polls stay the way theyve been these last few weeks, the general election will be held on Thursday May 1st,2008.I am so certain of it I've allready laid abet on at the bookies!
And they're stuffed in Scotland.
Labour want a moritorium on poster campaigns. In that case, Cameron would be a fool to agree. If I was Cameron I would have posters of Brown everywhere with the tagline "Remember your pension?".
If the tories want to win, they have go for Gordon. Starting a poster campaign now will stop the election dead in its tracks.
#4 M Hancock: You are being shortsighted.
This 'leak' was designed to rattle the Tories and send out a 'Brown doing well' bit of spin, and the media fell for it.
Laura, as a Scot, you know what they political situation is North of the border, you know how popular the SNP is, so why fall for this rubbish?
To me, the election timing is fixed for May 08. The reason is the timing of the announced 2p reduction in basic rate tax will take effect on 6 April 2008(yes,yes, I know about the abolition of the 10% band - I am a tax accountant by profession.)
Because when he goes to the polls, he will ask one very simple question to the Opposition and electorate;
"What is the basic rate of tax today?"
Beyond May and there will be the "we never voted for him anyway" claims from Opposition and media, which would be a pretty justified call.
G Brown is not only short of money to go to the counry, he is also short of policy. He is busy implementing the Tory policy on border control, but without putting more that new clothes on them.... sooo Labour, more spin.
Gordon Brown is likely to let this Parliament run for 4 years or so, as is usual, because that will have given him 2 years of premiership to point to when asked about his record.
People are conservative and like a degree of regularity in these things.
Going to the country to ask "Who Governs?" as Mr Heath did, is not popular, and Brown would be disregarded by many were he to ask them to the polling stations unneccessarily.
Mr Baldwin seemd to do quite well, don't think he was the model for "Windmill Dave," was he?
Lots of the Scots who narrowly returned the scunner Salmond would happily have voted for Brown, many more would have regarded their vote for the Nats as a mid term protest, and still others would like to cast one vote for their Nat, and one for a UK Labour Government.
So far as Brown's hold on power is concerned, the Scot Nats are neither here nor there, as I may have said before . . .
Brown has identified the Islamo-fascist menace (my phrase, defo not his) to Liberal Democracy and the War between those ideals as the battle of this century. He is likely to be right, I hope no-one is giving up on the battle vs Global Warming, which at least rivals it.