YOUR MP WRITES (From Worcester News)

YOUR MP WRITES

9:03am Thursday 11th October 2007

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As readers of this column will know, I have believed for
some time that Gordon Brown would not call an early election.
I must admit my confidence in this view became a little dented when Labour went 11 points ahead in the polls at the end of the week before last.
Rumours of an impending general election had started to circulate as a ploy by the Labour Party to taunt the Conservatives. Ten days ago it began to look like an unexpected genuine opportunity for Labour to grab a longer spell in power.
One question that arose immediately was what would be the effect of all this on the Conservative conference. There was also the unforeseen issue of Gordon Brown’s highly political visit to Iraq. As it turned out, both events were critical in swaying many voters away from Labour.
Before all this happened my forecast for the date of the next general election, expressed as long ago as September 2006, was the autumn of 2009.
I judged that Labour would want to stay in power for as long as possible without suffering the effects of a winter before polling day mindful as they are of Jim Callaghan’s experience in 1979 with disastrous consequences for him.
The events of the last couple of weeks have changed my mind about an autumn date. I do not think Gordon Brown will risk party conference time again, when the electorate is highly volatile, the nights are closing in and the Conservatives get the last word.
Brown has himself now effectively ruled out calling an election next year. According to my reckoning this leaves either the spring of 2009 or of 2010 for polling day. The choice between the two will be determined by the state of the opinion polls in early 2009.
However high-minded the rhetoric which will flow at the time, if the opinion polls do not show a firm Labour lead from the late autumn of 2008 onwards, the Prime Minister will go the whole distance, up to June 2010.
This would mean that we are only half way through this Parliament. What a change from the general feeling last week that polling day was imminent; if this view had been right, the general election campaign would have started already.