UK:Brown's lonely decision to postpone calling an election came after a disappointing poll, writes Frank Millar.
"This is really very bad for Gordon. They'd built him up as some sort of father of the nation figure, sitting above the party fray, always acting in the country's best interest. Now he just looks like a politician, and the charge of cynicism will stick."
This was the gleeful response of one still-loyal Blairite on Saturday afternoon upon hearing that Brown had indeed "bottled it" and would not after all be calling a "snap" election. Nor was his enjoyment tempered in the slightest by news that Brown's lonely decision came on the back of an ICM poll giving David Cameron's Conservatives a six point lead in the all-important marginal seats - suggesting the possible loss of Labour's majority and a hung parliament.
Already accused of "dithering", Brown elected not to face the cameras outside Number 10 but to confirm his decision instead in a pre-recorded interview for Andrew Marr's Sunday morning programme on the BBC. In it Brown claimed he could have won an election now on the question of "competency" but had chosen rather to show the country his "vision for change" and further develop his policies on health, housing and education.
But it was as unconvincing as his defence of last week's trip to Iraq on the eve of Cameron's conference speech, the explanations of his misleading account of the numbers of troops "coming home" for Christmas, his "smash and grab" raid on traditional Tory territory the week before in Bournemouth, or his tea party with Baroness Thatcher in Downing Street before that.
Liberal Democrat leader Menzies Campbell spoke for the many and not the few (to adapt a favourite New Labour phrase) when he accused Brown of a "loss of nerve" before declaring: "He should have stated his intentions, clearly and unequivocally. The inevitable conclusion is that he's been acting in the interests of the Labour Party and not in the interests of the country." Former Tory chairman Lord (Norman) Tebbit observed that Brown's big mistake had been living his election dilemma in full public view. Or, as our Blairite source put it with greater relish: "He [ Brown] wanted to be seen as 'a conviction politician' when he's actually been driven by the polls, needing the focus groups to tell him when it's time to call an election." That is the bottom line.
And despite the efforts of some loyalists yesterday, it was hard to imagine many believing Brown when he suggested it had been his "duty" to consider the information brought to him by others before arriving at his own decision in the national interest. Had Labour's lead been maintained Brown had cleared the decks to decree the national interest required a November election, in the confident belief that he would not only win his personal mandate but by a margin big enough to fragment the Conservative Party and kill off Cameron's leadership. There was more than a hint of hubris about suggestions that Brown wanted not merely to defeat but to destroy his opponents, consigning them to the wilds of opposition for another decade or more.
Yet that had been the vision outlined by advocates of an early election less than a fortnight ago, as they testified to Brown's strategic brilliance and implied that the greater "risk" would be to delay. Neither Brown nor those who advised him looked at all strategically brilliant yesterday, buried under wounding headlines mocking "Bottler Brown" and proclaiming the first serious "crisis" of his leadership.
Cameron was swift to claim his victory on Saturday. He had been the intended casualty of every Brownite calculation. Yet against the odds Cameron had faced down Brown and won, uniting his party and reconnecting with the country with inheritance tax proposals which some Labour insiders will admit were a work of "political genius". Brown, he said, had shown great weakness and indecision while "trying to spin his way into a general election" before being forced into "a humiliating retreat".
Barely a week ago Cameron had been told his Blackpool mission was to scare Brown off an early contest and win necessary time to reinvent the Conservative brand.
By the time he finished his own interview with Andrew Marr yesterday, however, it was almost possible to believe Cameron's "big disappointment" was that he might now have to wait two years for the opportunity to face Brown in an election.
Brown will now exude confident belief that this is all the froth of the post-conference season. He and his aides will also console themselves that excitement in the Westminster village and a few bruising encounters in the Commons over the next few days will occupy the chattering classes but go largely ignored by the general public. Better certainly to suffer some damaging headlines than the loss of real seats and possibly Labour's majority.
If the election is now delayed until 2009 (though he had not actually said that), Brown may calculate that all this will be forgotten as people again vote in their actual interest - assuming of course that feared bad times for the economy were not a motivation for the snap election that wasn't. He and Chancellor Darling will also hope to unravel shadow chancellor George Osborne's figures and seek to persuade the public of a multibillion "black hole" in the Tories' tax and spending plans.
Against that, John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University, says the latest ICM figures suggest Cameron "could well have made a durable rather than a temporary advance" in the past week. Sensing a potentially significant moment here, Cameron himself, meanwhile, showed his instinct for the jugular, suggesting Brown "is just not being straight with people". After all the effort to present an "un-spun" Brown as the change from everything people had grown to hate about the Blair years, that charge will hurt. And it might indeed just stick.