Brown Bottles It

[matgb]

So, El Gordo has chickened out and is 'treating people as fools', almost certainly as a result of this News of the World poll. He's attempted to defend the decision but I concur with the Observer, this has sparked a Crisis for Brown as election ruled out. All of this leads me to this YouTube vid by Will/whoukmy friend Mr Pack^[1]:

Scary analysis of it from the perspective of the Tories:

A poll to be published by Sunday's News of the World puts the Tories ahead by 6% in marginal seats, with the party overall at 44% against Labour's 38%.

Translated into a general election, it would mean a hung Parliament with Labour holding 306 seats and the Tories 246.

They'd win 6% more votes, but 60 less seats according to the analysis. Can we have STV now PLZKTHX. Oh wait, that sort of forward thinking is beyond the Stupid Party isn't it.

The real question I guess is has this damaged Brown more for the obvious reasons, or has he hurt the Cameron Project by forcing Davy to tack to the right and go for a core votes strategy?

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Crossposted on my journal and to ukpolitics here

[1] Message from Mark: Will's work, but I put it all down to the management, so amended accordingly

Comments

[matgb]

From a purely partizan perspective, I suspect overall Brown will recover, but it does look as if he dithered a lot. I've edited in the last paragraph from my cross post now:

The real question I guess is has this damaged Brown more for the obvious reasons, or has he hurt the Cameron Project by forcing Davy to tack to the right and go for a core votes strategy?

I think part of it was to put off Davy a lot, he was forced to tack right to mobilise the base, and now will have to recover a bit having played up the Nasty Party image too much.

I thought Cameron was wrong to call for an election in the way he did, and Campbell was only slightly better calling for it based on the manifesto pledges Labour went to the polls on. Constitutional illiteracy &c. Brown should've killed the rumours and speculation dead, by failing to do so early he damages the process of politics.

[andrewducker]

Oh don't get me wrong - by playing with the dates Brown has been actively "political" with the system, which is a problem.

As for dithering - I'm totally in favour of delayed decision making. If you don't have the figures _now_ then saying "I won't make a decision until I'm happy I know the answer." is entirely the right thing to do, and damn "Looking Strong".

[fearmeforiampink]

Part of the problem, from my reading of the situation anyway, is that he's tried to make it look like a moral choice rather than one based on his chances of getting in.

He's said that the reason for making the decision is so that people can judge him on full governing, rather than just disaster management.

If that was really his reason, then he should have said so as soon as the debate about it started. As is, looks like he was going "Ooh-err, can I win it... not good enough chance, I'll wait", and then bullshitting to that up.