WE NEED A GENERAL ELECTION......

You know how it is when you need a tooth extracting. No matter how much you want to put off the inevitable , a dentist ( assuming you have one) has to be booked and the grisly business has to be gone through.
I am coming to the view that this is precisely where we are in the context of a General Election. Grimly hanging on in the hope that things can only get better is frankly, it seems to me, clutching at straws in a climate where things could, actually, get a lot worse for the Labour Party.
I think it's time to face up to some unpleasant facts. Fact One being that, whenever an election is called, it's going to be a pretty awful scenario. In a year's time, when Brown will HAVE to have an election, there are likely to be many more unemployed, the economy is unlikely to have recovered significantly, and the public anger over MPs and their expenses is likely to have gelled into a festering resentment of all the main parties.
The main beneficiaries of the public's ennui will be the smaller parties. Their share of the vote is unlikely to result - thanks to the FPTP system - into mass gains for any of the parties to the left of Labour. But it could well give the BNP one or two MPs and dozens of Labour MPs already on a knife-edge of disaster could well be destroyed by another 12 months in office. As far as I'm concerned, we're now in damage limitation mode. Most highly marginal Labour seats are more than likely to go Tory so we have to hang on to as many MPs as we can.
A tipping-point may be the June elections, which if catastrophic may lead to calls for another Leader and a leadership election. No matter who were to take over from Brown ( and the only consolation is that Blears and Purnell are now out of the picture) it's irrefutable we could not stagger on for another 12 months. So- an autumn General Election it would have to be.
I doubt there is anyone out there in the Labour Party who relishes the prospect but if what troops we have are to be rallied - then rallying them sooner rather than later has to be the least worst option.