BRITAIN:LABOUR CHIEFS appeared to be distancing themselves from the party's "class war" campaign in Crewe and Nantwich yesterday as a new poll pointed to a Conservative victory in tomorrow's crucial byelection.
Ministers and MPs have piled into the constituency in a desperate bid to defend the late Gwyneth Dunwoody's 7,000 general election majority. But the man running her daughter Tamsin Dunwoody's "top and tails" campaign against Conservative candidate Edward Timpson yesterday admitted Labour could lose, as a ComRes poll for the Independent gave the Tories a 13-point lead.
Government whip Stephen McCabe conceded: "Voters may well take the chance to punish us and if that's what happens it is hard to resist."
Party officials say traditional Conservative voters in Nantwich are bursting at the opportunity to claim the seat and hand leader David Cameron his party's first byelection gain from Labour in 30 years. And while there is plenty of evidence of "core" Labour voters holding firm in Crewe, many there are also predicting a famous Conservative win.
Downing Street is also bracing itself for another weekend of speculation about prime minister Gordon Brown's leadership if Crewe does fall, following an ICM poll suggesting Labour's support nationally is in freefall. Yesterday's Guardian had Labour 14 points behind the Conservatives, its worst showing in an ICM poll since May 1987, just before Margaret Thatcher won her third general election.
For all their readiness to talk up the prospects of a challenge, there is as yet no convincing evidence that Mr Brown's critics have the capacity or the stomach to dislodge him. However, only a surprise win in Crewe is likely to stop renewed infighting after yesterday's finding that 75 per cent of those who voted Labour in 2005 think that Tony Blair was a better prime minister. Overall, voters rated Mr Brown behind Mrs Thatcher and her successor, John Major, and only eight points ahead of William Hague.
Mr Cameron has attempted to hold Mr Brown personally responsible for the Crewe campaign depicting the Tory candidate as "a toff". Labour activists have greeted Mr Cameron in top hats in what some suspected might be a trial run for a general election campaign against the Old Etonian Conservative leader.
Mr Brown's internal critics on the other hand, including Blairite former ministers, are anxious that any postmortem about the Crewe campaign should not deflect attention from deeper concerns about the party's leadership.