Richard Baum

So Mr Brown has decided not to call a General Election, and 50,000 political activists from every party under the sun breath a collective sigh of relief / joy that they don’t have to pound the streets in the autumn cold handing out election leaflets. Much as I like election campaigns, one per year is enough I think.

I am not the first to say it, and I won’t be the last, but I think our Prime Minister has scored a big own goal with this one. Not with the decision itself, perhaps, so much as the way it was made.

Many of the best own goals seem to take an eternity to cross the line, as the seemingly impossible scenario of a defender bashing the ball into his own net plays in slow motion to the slack-jawed crowd. This particular own goal really has taken a long time to be scored though. Mr Brown started kicking the ball goal-wards weeks ago, by refusing to rule out an election. And by refusing to extinguish the rumours immediately, he was always going to watch that ball creep towards his goal in real-life slow motion.

The opposition parties (mine to a certain extent, but certainly the Tories), have been excellent in seizing the opportunity to make Mr Brown look in turn both scandalously opportunistic and incredibly spineless. When it looked for all the world as if opinion polls were steering the PM towards a “yes” decision, he was made to look like he was going to the country not for its benefit, but for the Labour party’s. And when the polls steered him the other way, he was made to look too scared to risk it.

Why it was ever even considered is a mystery to me. So some people moan about the fact that Mr Brown was never elected Prime Minister. Well, nobody has ever been elected Prime Minister by the people. We vote for MPs and these MPs represent parties who form a government. We elected Labour to govern for upto five years in 2005, and Gordon Brown was fairly elected to lead that party just as Tony Blair was before him. And we’re halfway through that five year period. To call another election so soon after the last would indeed have been opportunistic and not in the interests of the country. Labour were elected to govern, and that’s what they should’ve been left to do.

Which is exactly what Mr Brown should’ve said. Now though, he’s admitted he thought about it, and the only explanation that holds muster as to why he’s had a better idea is that he thought he might lose. He chooses now, this moment, to talk about finishing the job of governing. Why didn’t he say this in July? Now he looks weak and indecisive, and running scared of policy decisions from the Tories which play to middle England marginals but are probably paper thin in terms of realism.

It’s good news and bad for the Lib Dems, I think. Good news because no matter what the opinion poll yo-yo-ing was doing between Labour and the Tories, we stayed the same on 16%, and we may well have got whooped in lots of seats. Bad news because if Gordon Brown decides on May 2008 (which I know is looking an outside bet to May 2009) then the situation might be even worse. Good news because Ming Campbell said the dithering was bad for the country, that we were able to fight the good fight, and that Gordon Brown looks silly for choosing now to say “no.” Bad because David Cameron said all of these things louder and more convincingly.

All of which, I know for sure, is of little interest to the people of this ward who still want their streets cleaned, their roads mended and something done about the type of kids who demolished some roadworks signs outside my house this afternoon and walked off laughing. At least now we can spend the next few weeks concentrating on that, rather than anything else.

Rick