David Cameron and George Osborne have won the plaudits for overturning
Labour’s lead and stopping an early general election. But it was Liam Fox,
the Shadow Defence Secretary, who did the most personal damage to Gordon
Brown and left him regretting that he had ever allowed speculation about an
autumn election to get so dangerously out of control.
Conservative activists woke up in Blackpool last Tuesday to the sight of Mr
Brown gladhanding British troops in Basra. Tuesday was defence-debate
morning at the conference and Dr Fox was centre stage. He was outraged at
what he saw as Mr Brown’s election stunt. It is always risky to attack
politicians when they visit the Forces overseas, and apparently no senior
military had any quarrel with Mr Brown’s trip. But Dr Fox dared, and won. He
took to the airwaves lambasting Mr Brown for using soldiers as election
pawns.
When the news of the Tory attack trickled back to Iraq, the reaction in the
Brown team was shock and fury. The trip had been planned for some time to
help Mr Brown to make his Commons statement on Iraq and neither he nor
anyone with him was ready for the Tory onslaught. Mr Brown had spent three
months building up his patriotic credentials and here they were being torn
to shreds.
The Times understands that it was at that moment that the Prime Minister began
to harbour very serious doubts about the way he - and he knows that the
responsibility is his - had allowed the build-up of hints about an autumn
election to go unchecked.
As the bruised Prime Minister faces MPs today on their first day back after a
tumultuous summer, it looks as if Mr Brown has thrown away the gains so
carefully built up since the end of June. He has scored heavily against Mr
Cameron on leadership qualities and suitability to run the country. Will he
survive the claims that he has been playing fast and loose with the
electorate, that he is a ditherer and that, finally, he has “bottled it”?
Mr Brown and his ministers are arguing that the delay will give him time not
only to take apart the Tory tax and spending plans but to set out his vision
of what he intends to do for the country. That may be so. He will certainly
change inheritance tax to spike Tory guns. And he will take on the “Bottler
Brown” charge today by subjecting himself to a grilling at his (brought
forward) monthly press conference at lunchtime and later at a special
meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party.
For Mr Brown, the sad truth is that he never wanted an autumn election. It had
almost certainly been his intention to call an election in his first year,
but he always had next May in mind. He sent out a signal to his party that
he would go to the country fairly soon by announcing the appointment of
Douglas Alexander as his election chief. But he had always thought that this
autumn would be just too soon.
His success in handling the London and Glasgow bomb attempts, foot-and-mouth,
the floods, and even the crisis at Northern Rock, have ironically
contributed in a big way to Mr Brown making the biggest mistake of his brief
premiership, and even of his career. It was fairly early in August when the
polls suggested not only that the Brown bounce was holding firm, but
accelerating, that the pollsters - he relies on Deborah Mattinson and Stan
Greenberg, the New York pollster, who worked for Tony Blair and Bill
Clinton, with contributions still coming in from Mr Blair’s polling guru
Philip Gould - told Mr Brown that he would easily win an autumn election.
The Young Turks close to Mr Brown - Douglas Alexander, Ed Balls Ed Miliband
and Spencer Livermore, his long-time political adviser - were attracted by
the idea of getting an election out of the way, “finishing off” Mr Cameron
and giving Mr Brown a four or five-year run, possibly right up to the 2012
Olympics. Other more cautious heads, such as Alistair Darling and Jack
Straw, who had initially been totally against the idea, were seen as less
“anti” than before. MPs in marginal seats queued up to tell ministers to go
for it. Whenever he was asked, Mr Brown said merely that he was getting on
with the business of governing. That today is his problem because he had it
within his power, as the speculation wavered to and fro, to kill the story.
But he never did. And when he was riding high at Labour’s conference, Mr
Brown must surely have begun to believe the predictions, even though no one
in the inner circle recalls him saying that he wanted an election. He
listened to them and mused.
The crucial miscalculation was to believe that the election threat would
destabilise the Conservatives during their conference. It had precisely the
opposite impact. Labour helped to produce the most united Tory gathering for
years. Mr Brown and his advisers, who have always prided themselves on their
strategic thinking, got it wrong. Even so, it took a long time for the
message to get home. Throughout the Tory conference the Young Turks were
banging the election drum.
The week before, at Bournemouth, the early election was up and running with a
batch of favourable polls as Labour delegates met on the Saturday and
Sunday. Then, on the Sunday lunchtime, Mr Balls, always regarded as the
voice of Mr Brown, did something strange. He suggested that it might take
“months” for Labour to set out its programme. But by mid-conference there
were no doubts and Mr Balls himself publicly questioned - again it was
something the pollsters had raised - whether the bigger gamble was to wait
rather than to go now.
The election machine was swung into action. Mr Miliband trawled ministers for
ideas for the manifesto. Sue Nye, Mr Brown’s gatekeeper, who sees more of
him than anyone, was one remaining cautionary voice, telling people that Mr
Brown was not necessarily set fast on an early poll.
So the Conservatives met. An apprehensive mood at the start got appreciably
better after Mr Osborne spoke. The polls tracking events daily began
shifting, but the mood in No 10 and around it did not change. On Thursday
things began to look serious as news emerged of three opinion polls that
showed the gap narrowing fast. But just as political correspondents began
writing stories suggesting that the odds against an early election were
widening, the “go for it” camp went into overdrive. Mr Brown, at a party on
Thursday night, was inscrutable, but friends claimed that he was “itching”
for an election.
But what the pollsters have given they can take away. On Friday morning Mr
Miliband, Mr Alexander, Mr Greenberg and Mr Livermore, among others, met the
Prime Minister in No 10. The results were just coming through of a poll of
marginal seats that appeared in yesterday’s News of the World. It was bad -
very bad. The inheritance tax bombshell had gone down a storm in the
marginals.
Mr Greenberg drawled that, if he went for it, Mr Brown would win, but that he
might not win well. It was devastating news for Mr Brown who had long
realised that he would be on a loser if he did not come back with a hefty
majority. The early election effectively died there. Suggestions that the
Young Turks went on arguing right up to Saturday lunchtime are wide of the
mark. The brakes began to be applied. The press was still told that there
would be a weekend decision but no one was bullish any more. Mr Alexander is
thought to have told Mr Brown on Friday might that he had little choice but
to call it off.
On Saturday morning it did not take long to agree that it was not on. The same
advisers, this time joined by Mr Balls, took a final look at what they knew
would be emerging in yesterday’s polls and gave the thumbs down.
The only real discussion was how to tell the world.
As he woke to headlines telling of his humiliation, Mr Brown wished that he
had trusted his own instincts. His one consolation is that he can be Prime
Minister until 2010 if he wants. Between now and then he may have a
recurring nightmare – what if he had still gone ahead and announced an
election tomorrow? He could have gone down as the one of the shortest-lived
prime ministers in history.
That is not the inscription he wants on his political tombstone but Mr Brown
and his close friends realise that he has been badly damaged.
— Readers of Times Online were the first to hear that Gordon
Brown had decided to call off the autumn election. The news was broken on
the popular Comment Central blog at 1.50pm on Saturday, more than 90 minutes
before any other news source. The BBC website ran the story a full two hours
later.
