Scott Amsler is an American and not a Labour MP, though he certainly could be one. For Mr Amsler has recently been given permission to hold his wedding in a cemetery in Pacific, Missouri. A graveyard, he says, offers tranquillity and would be the perfect spot for the ceremony.

He is not, he insists, “a freak or Satan worshipper or cult member” (which is comforting) but thinks this location linked with death “just goes with our theme”. It may not be irrelevant that the bridegroom earns his living renovating hearses.

Today we report a similar sentiment afflicting the Parliamentary Labour Party. It has had an outbreak of dark fatalism. According to our reporter Greg Hurst on page 2, Labour MPs in marginal seats seem resigned to the prospect of Gordon Brown succeeding Tony Blair but cannot engineer much enthusiasm for it.

Every time an opinion poll is published, they scurry to consult the website www.politicalcalculus.co.uk that projects how many of them would lose their seats if the findings of that survey were repeated at a general election. After an ICM poll in The Guardian last week that suggested that the Conservatives had a nine-point lead, and 13 in a theoretical choice between David Cameron and Gordon Brown, they were verging on the suicidal.

I believe that these MPs are behaving in a manner even more morbid, sad and strange than that of Mr Amsler and his partner.

Their actions are also totally unnecessary for three reasons.

First, let us start with that poll. ICM was, it should be recorded, the most accurate pollster of the period 1995-2005 and its founder, Nick Sparrow, has a decent claim to be the founder of modern thinking about how best to read public opinion. There are, nevertheless, grounds to contest the ICM findings. The other two most prominent pollsters for newspapers — Populus and YouGov — both recorded a fall in the Tory advantage this month. Local council by-elections, which some analysts swear by as a device for testing voter sentiment, did the same. And there has recently been a curious feature to ICM’s numbers.

This concerns the Liberal Democrats. According to ICM, Ming Campbell and his crew were at a 22 per cent rating for four months from last August to November. They then suddenly plunged to 18 per cent in December (pushing the Conservative lead up), recovered spectacularly in January to 23 per cent (forcing the Tories down) and collapsed again to 19 per cent this month; indeed, down to a meagre 17 per cent on a Cameron versus Brown versus Campbell leadership measure.

No other pollster has picked up this extraordinary Lib Dem volatility. Though it might exist, it is still difficult to work out what might be causing it. The Liberal Democrats have not exactly been dominating the news in the past three months. There were contestants on Celebrity Big Brother who were not remotely racist who won more headlines in that period.

To my mind, this poll could not be more obviously rogue if it came with a large bag marked “swag”. I would happily make a small bet that these figures will not be repeated next month. Indeed, if there were to be a new ICM poll showing another alleged Lib Dem recovery, and so a weaker Conservative position, it would probably be accompanied by an explanation on the lines of: “Experts contend the shift since February was prompted by Mr Cameron’s gaffe in wearing a lime green shirt on Richard & Judy and Mr Brown’s touching speech to the National Trainspotters Society.”

Secondly, British politics is now in the midst of the phoniest war since 1939-1940. Mr Blair is under effective house arrest in Downing Street, courtesy of Yates of the Yard. He feels, correctly, that he cannot indicate his intentions until the police have stopped dragging his senior aides into their stations. Meanwhile, Mr Brown cannot set out his stall until that resignation letter has been submitted.

The Opposition may attack the Government as it wishes, but ministers can make only the most feeble of responses. How the Chancellor must have ached with envy when he saw the photographs of that hoodie aiming a finger gun at the Conservative leader. His clunking fist would have come with live ammo. Until that real battle starts, every abstract Cameron/Brown poll counts for very little.

Finally, many Labour MPs forget how hard it is statistically for the Conservatives to obtain an outright majority at the next election and they ignore that Labour would enjoy a safety cushion if there were to be a hung Parliament. There has been a lot of chat in Westminster about a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition. It is abject nonsense. While a few Cameronites have made overtures, whether out of arrogance or ignorance they have vastly underestimated the price that any party would have to pay for such an alliance.

The Tories seem to think that they could obtain a pact at the cost of two chocolate biscuits, a £5 book token and tender talk on the environment. In reality, the price would include proportional representation and an approach to the EU no less positive than that which Mr Blair has taken. Mr Brown would meet those conditions if he had to. Mr Cameron could not.

Labour MPs would be well advised to stop examining political websites. Indeed, they might be wise to refrain from inspecting any polls on voting intentions published anywhere for the better part of the next six months. They should reflect more deeply on a situation in which they benefit from benign electoral mathematics, a strong economy and a switch in Prime Minister that will inevitably blunt the “time for a change” argument which is their main liability. They should, in short, get out more often. But probably not, perhaps, to attend weddings held in cemeteries.

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