A year after taking power, the Prime Minister is hoping that tackling his greatest challenge – the economy – will yet prove to be his salvation. The Conservatives have other plans, Philip Webster reports

It could, and should, have been so different – and it was for a time. By now, nearly a year after becoming Prime Minister, Gordon Brown might have hoped to have secured his own mandate in a spring 2008 election. As it is, his dream has been shattered with his own and Labour’s ratings in freefall.

There have been two turning points: the first, early last October; and the second, this April and May.

The polls chart, with grim brutality, the brief up, and the longer down, of the first Brown year. The up lasted from when the uncontested leadership campaign began in early May last year, through his arrival in No 10 on June 27 to September, with Labour’s rating rising from 29 per cent to a peak of 40 per cent. Mr Brown’s initial mantra of change was reinforced by a blizzard of daily initiatives last July.

His prime-ministerial image was buttressed then by his handling of terrorist attacks within two days of taking office, then by floods, and, in August, by an isolated foot-and-mouth outbreak. Even after the Northern Rock bank run broke in September, Mr Brown and Alistair Darling were also, at first, trusted more than the Tories to handle any economic troubles.

The first turning point came in early October. The initial successes fuelled talk of a November 2007 election, and Mr Brown failed to make a quick decision, creating an opportunity for the Tories to take the initiative, as they did over inheritance tax. Mr Brown’s pretence that the polls played no part in his decision not to call an election and the muddled tax proposals in the PreBudget Report shortly afterwards changed his image from one of strength to dithering, a charge that has stuck.

These errors were clearly Mr Brown’s, but they were compounded by bad luck (notably the loss of Revenue & Customs computer discs containing details of over 20 million people) and a worsening global credit crunch. Labour’s poll ratings fell to 33 per cent by the end of the year.

Mr Brown attempted to assert his authority in the new year by reorganising his Downing Street operation and introducing a range of new policies. But he weakened his own position by refusing for a long time to recognise, or respond to, the backlash over the abolition of the 10p rate of income tax announced in spring last year, though coming into effect in April this year. This undermined his support not only among voters, as shown in Labour losses in the May local elections and in the Crewe by-election, but also, as significantly, among fellow Cabinet ministers, who began to question his judgment.

The second turning point came this spring when Labour’s rating dropped sharply again, to about 26 per cent, the level touched by the Tories in the mid1990s. Some of the decline can be blamed on the global economic position, the credit crunch, the fall in house prices and the rise in fuel and food prices.

But the two key turning points are linked with mistakes by Mr Brown himself: the botched election decision and the 10p tax fiasco. Voters sense this: according to the Populus leader index (on a 0 to 10 scale) Mr Brown’s rating has fallen since last July from 5.49 to 3.9. David Cameron’s rating has risen from 4.81 to 5.25. Voters have made up their minds about Mr Brown – and such an adverse verdict will be very hard to reverse.

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