“Gordon Brown did a spectacular U-turn yesterday as only he can. One moment he was going full steam ahead with his plan to tax the poor more and the next he was outraged at the very thought of anyone perpetrating such a wholly despicable act.

At first it reminded me of someone who utters a swear word and then slaps himself for saying it. Except Gordon didn’t slap himself for, of course, he won’t admit to saying it. So instead he accused David Cameron of saying something worse and slapped him.”

Ann Treneman 

Of increasing significance is Gordon Brown’s habit of breaking into an unnatural Cheshire Cat smile at entirely inappropriate moments.  This particular (and avoidable in that it is deliberate) facial mannerism makes him appear like, as one of my late, politically incorrect relatives would have said, a “silly-boy”.  While it is designed to annoy members of the Opposition, especially the Conservative leader David Cameron, it only serves to make the Prime Minister look more ridiculous.

The unavoidable inference to be drawn from Gordon Brown’s constant grinning during yesterday’s Prime Minister’s Questions session is that his monumental gaffe in increasing the tax burden upon the low paid is all very much a big joke.  That he has created the entirely wrong impression amongst those outside the Westminster Village is completely lost on him.  As Captain Mainwaring would have said to Pike,  “foolish boy!”

“Why is Labour still so popular?” asks Pattrick Hennessy in his blog following the latest ICM poll published by The Guardian, which claims support for Labour has risen to 34%, an increase of five points from last month's ICM poll, whilst Conservative support is down by three points at 39%.

To a great extent, Mr Hennessy answers his own question but another explanation might be that Labour supporters are more fiercely loyal than those of other parties, more tribal, more likely to adopt a “my party, right or wrong” attitude of mind.  Conservative and Liberal Democrat core support is significantly more critical of its own party and to a degree, fair-weather.

It also helps that Labour is allowed to get away with facing both ways.  This started in earnest in late 2006 with Hazel Blears opposing a hospital ward closure in her constituency, when that very process was the result of a policy of a Government of which she was a member.  Her protest was a success, with the Government suffering only minor embarassment  whilst Miss Blears attained heroine status amongst her constituents.  The proposed Post Office closures provided another opportunity for Labour MPs to win approval from their constituents by opposing their own Government’s policy.  Now we have the charade of Labour MPs griping about the abolition of the ten per cent tax band, a measure they “nodded through” the House last year.  Nevertheless, they have won the approval of their constituents with Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling suffering no more than a little egg on their faces.

On the other hand, perhaps this is just another case of an opinion poll playing the usual old trick of understating support for the Conservatives whilst overstating that for Labour.  We shall have to await the results of next week’s elections, when all should become clear.

Mr Parris as prescient as ever, predicts the new scramble for Africa.

Gordon Brown is having a particularly hard time of it at the moment, but from such a low point any success can be spun as a turning point.  The Media tells us that the next fortnight will be critical for him, the dark inference being that if he does not deal with the challenges to his authority in that time, his premiership will be damaged permanently.  Labour, we are told, is facing a “meltdown” in the local elections to be held on 1^st May.  The Government is “facing defeat” concerning its proposal to detain without charge terrorist suspects for up to forty-two days.  There will be a “rebellion” if something is not done to compensate the lowly paid for the abolition of the ten per cent tax band.  To cap it all, The Guardian reports that Labour might lose the Crewe and Nantwich by-election, when that contest takes place.

We have been here before, as Labour support was supposed to be facing potential meltdown in the local elections of 2006 and 2007.  It didn’t happen, nor was it ever likely to have done. The plain truth is that the Labour Party would have to be led by Adolf Hitler or Beelzebub himself before its core support failed to turn out at any election.  On the other hand, the opportunities for advance by the Conservatives are limited. Having been successful in local elections during the past two years, the Conservatives have reached already a high tide mark and are the incumbent administration in many a council, with all the risk that entails.  For the first time in twenty-seven years Ken Livingstone is being forced to fight hard for continued control of London, but he is likely to win the latest mayoral contest, though by a whisker.  In the Crewe by-election, the Conservatives will come a creditable second, but win they will not.  With vague promises of “putting things right” for the lower paid, Gordon Brown will avoid an embarrassing (and costly) U-turn on his tax policy.  Arms will be twisted and even more vague promises will be made to ensure that the time for detention of terrorist suspects is extended.

Having first overstated the strength or significance of the challenges faced by Mr Brown, the Media will then perceive the Government as having passed crucial tests. It will then pause to dwell upon the Conservatives “lack” of (local) electoral success.  From 2^nd May it will be the turn of David Cameron and the Conservatives’ to face the heat.

“…Corruption tends to flourish the longer an incumbent is able to hold on to power”

said Ken Livingstone in 1998, as Simon Jenkins reminds us.

“Barely a month ago, Labour was a modest three points behind in the opinion polls and slowly if unspectacularly closing in on the Conservatives. Now it is all at sea” 

said The Times, today.

Whilst it is true that the Populus poll conducted for The Times and published on 9^th March 2008 pointed to a Conservative lead of “only” three points, other, fairly contemporaneous opinion polls indicated a much larger lead for the Conservatives (ICM, nine and YouGov, sixteen points). Even worse, the general trend of all the polls taken together showed and still shows Labour falling further behind.  Though it is understandable that The Times would consider its own poll as first amongst equals, the impression given that all the polls showed a three point deficit is wrong and manifestly so.  This is not an isolated misapprehension because in recent weeks a number of commentators throughout the Media have opined upon Labour’s unpopularity as if it was a mere temporary phenomenon and assumed that the very best that the Conservatives can achieve at the next General Election is to be the largest party, by just a handful of MPs, in the House of Commons.  We have now moved well beyond that scenario.

Those in the Media who are sympathetic to Gordon Brown’s administration do it no favours by trying to paint too favourable a picture when in reality the prognosis is potentially so bleak. On the ground, far from the rarefied atmosphere in which most commentators exist, Labour is deeply unpopular and mistrusted.  Its life force is ebbing away.

Worse to come for Labour

“A key inquiry into the Met's handling of the Stockwell shooting has been shelved for political reasons”

proclaims the Evening Standard  today.

As I understand the situation, the publication of the report has been merely delayed…again, rather than actually “shelved”.  Nevertheless, any suspicion that the Government or one of its agencies might be suppressing a report, even temporarily, must be more damaging than the publication of the report, even if its findings are uncomfortable reading.

From having been able to successfully massage news for so long, Labour’s habit of walking into sucker punches has now become pronounced.

According to the current Foreign Secretary, Labour's David Miliband, the Conservative candidate for London's Mayor, Boris Johnson is “not serious enough to run the capital”.  Of course, he would say that, wouldn’t he?

Andrew Gilligan of the Evening Standard puts the charge against Mr Johnson in proper context.

“[The Mayoralty] …could be important. It has a massive budget, and could do a lot of good. But it has made very little impact on most of the things that really matter - the shocking state of the Tube, the lack of investment in new rail, the skills shortage and structural unemployment of the East End, the near-impossibility for most Londoners of affording a home.

All those, unlike Palestine, or global warming, are within the Mayor's power to change. But instead, we have million pound buses, grants to cronies, space programmes. That is why it is a fundamental, if surprisingly common, mistake to call Livingstone a serious mayor. It is he, not Boris Johnson, who is the real joke.”

Says Nick Cohen

“The Labour tribe has many prejudices against the privileged but not the one that would help Britain most. It should have an aversion to Left-wing public school boys and never allow them to run the state education system.”

Then again, given their track record during the course of the past forty-five years, perhaps left-wing public school boys shouldn’t be allowed to run anything else, either.

“A man who specialises in creating chaos out of order.”

 Ann Treneman

Reports Patrick Hennessy today in The Sunday Telegraph,

“The Conservatives are heading for power with a comfortable majority of more than 40 seats, according an ICM opinion poll for The Sunday Telegraph.

The survey puts David Cameron's party on 43 per cent, up 6 points from this newspaper's last poll in January, with Labour unchanged on 32 per cent and the Liberal Democrats down three points at 18 per cent.

However, the Tory majority would be wiped out if the voting system for general elections were changed. Ministers are thought to be considering a new system which would see voters being allowed to choose a second preference as well as their first-choice.” (My emphasis).

How very Robert Mugabe.

“It is one of the grave distempers of our times, this prejudice towards the Jewish people, their nation and their collective identity. And one of the tasks of our times is its exposure, its combating and its defeat.”

Michael Gove