It's not often I agree with William Hague, but his description of Gordon Brown as a "calculation politician" rather than "conviction politician" has more than an element of truth in it. And that's why I'm going to stick my neck out and say Gordon WON'T call a General Election. Why? Several reasons.
1. People will perceive it as another stunt and he may yet pay the price
2. Opinion polls can be utterly unreliable
3. In Scotland and Wales, the electoral situation is far from stable for labour and most Scottish MPs have told brown they don'twant an election
4. Elections in November are not exactly great for turn-out purposes nor for campaigners.
And, most importantly, Gordon has only just got his hands on the top job he has wanted for decades.I've always seen him as a bit like Hamlet - the eternal procrastinator. Look how long he hung on before rallying his troops to stick the knife into Blair. We shall see........
Monday, 1 October 2007
WILL HE STAY OR WILL HE GO TO THE COUNTRY?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
6 comments:
From Paul Flynn blog:
"Tricky-in at least one English seat where the sitting candidate announced that she was standing down. The expected replacement has pulled out and the constituency is horrified at at the prospect of an unsuitable shoe-in from on high. The seat is very marginal one that depends on the great goodwill of the retiring MP. She is the only credible candidate. As a good trooper, she is prepared to do her duty, stand again and give Labour the only chance of winning.
Will the party see sense? No doubt there will be a nasty procedural mess to sort out. So strong is the local feeling, an independent candidate is a possibility"
is by any chance your seat?
No it's not.
Thanks. So it must the other one with a female MP standing down (there aren't many Lab women retiring and sitting for marginal seats..so the guess game is easier)
Will he, won't he? You may be right but surely a key question he will be asking himself is, are things likely to be better, the same, or worse in the future? The odds are surely on the latter as trouble and strife pile up, that being the natural order of things for all governments.
Also, and this is I think is the clincher, by failing to kill the speculation and then refusing to face the electorate, he will open himself to endless taunts of weakness amounting to political cowardice.
It's worth bearing in mind that these days there is no ideological fervour driving 'the political class' (Peter Oborne's phrase), they're just in it for the power and the perks, not to achieve some political or social purpose.
Andrea, are you talking about Lynne Jones ???????If so I hope she DOES stand......
grimupnorth, I was thinking about Jean Dean in marginal Burton.
In the case of Lynne Jones, her retirement should have not produced a new selection as Birmingham will see a reduction in the numer of seats and so sitting MPs in that part of Birmingham would have covered the remaining 2 seats (Steve McCabe in Selly Oak and Roger Godsiff in Hall Green...unless if Flynn's comments about "expected replacement pulling out" refers to a late retirement by Godsiff...I'm not sure if I would define Hall Green as "very marginal", but on new boundaries (very drastic boundary changes...in that area it's difficult to decide which seats is the continuation of what!) it is marginal...uhm, I don't know at this point..but it's quite intriguing..I'm sure more details may emerge later about this situation.
But at least we can rule out Calder Valley!
Post a Comment