Why?

The polls are in for a shock.

I actually feel that we’re in a recession now although the thing about recessions is that you don’t know they’ve happened until some time later because the statistics that confirm a technical recession are retrospective.

Labour are gambling that the economy will have recovered by Spring 2010. And they can then present Brown as the trustworthy captain who steered the country through the storms of global economic difficulty.

The real question is whether the economy will recover sufficiently to make this claim believable to enough people to make a significant difference at the election.

However, I think that even a good economic recovery will not be enough for Labour to win an overall majority. For both Brown and his cabinet are viewed as being quite a lot worse than Blair and his cabinet. And conversly Cameron and his cabinet are seen to be considerably better than Howard and his cabinet. Also it is highly likely that the Lib Dems will do better than current opinion polls are suggesting.

Last time, Labour were very lucky to win by scraping a majority in so many seats. I really can’t see that being repeated. But the more the economy recovers the closer it MIGHT be.

They must fight with that fact that they have an awful leader and no-one to replace him, let alone anyone who will hold their seat in 2010 with enough of a majority to be secure from head-hunting.

The political majority is in favour of cutting taxes, which is practically a death-knell for a Labour administration at any time.

Whilst the Tories are not gaining much in Scotland, and a little more in Wales, this leaves the North as a place where, by elimination, people must be swinging heavily towards the Tories. Labour will have trouble fighting this whilst fighting the SNP in Scotland and Plaid Cymru, both of whom fight for Labour’s current ground (and perhaps to the left) with the bonus of nationalist/regionalist tendencies. Labour is thus attacked from the unionist and nat/regionalist sides.

Labour may (distantly) have trouble from the left, if the hard-liners get their act together; the unions may be pushed to breaking and, conceivably, more will join the LibDems, Nats and Plaid. But this is a distant position, where the only effects have been Galloway and a few other independents.

I don’t believe that Labour can even fight a good election; they simply haven’t the cash. The Tories, due to being the pro-business, pro-capitalist party since the Liberals fell apart 100 years ago, can rely on big businesses who, despite some conspiracists, can’t stage the business equivalent of the 1984/5 strike.