General Election Odds: Miserable week for Labour gets backbenchers thinking

General Election Betting / Chicken Dinner / 30 April 2009 / Leave a Comment

The tidal wave of bad news continues to crash over Gordon Brown and the waters show no sign of abating...

The great eighteenth century landscape gardener, Lancelot Capability Brown was so named because whenever he was summoned by an aristocrat eager to see his property beautified by Mr Brown's green fingers, Brown always declared that his lordship's gardens had great capabilities.

The not-so-great twenty-first century political landscape wrecker Gordon 'Inability' Brown has never found it easy to persuade his listeners that anything is rosy, either in the garden or anywhere else. If anything, he could be said to have brown thumbs, an expression coined by Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter to describe the performance of his hapless underling, the journalist Toby Young. When Young pressed Carter for an explanation, he was told that brown thumbs were the opposite of green fingers everything you touch turns to s**t.

Were Inability in any doubt as to the quality of his performance - and it's not unheard of for those occupying positions of power to delude themselves that things are rolling along quite smoothly and everyone loves them - he could do worse than look at a headline in today's Times. The stench of death is reminiscent of Major's last days in office, it humbly suggests.

The betting certainly concurs with this diagnosis, with Labour at a sickly [6.2] to win most seats at the next election, and a near terminal [12.5] to win an overall majority (the Tories are [1.19] and [1.43] respectively.)

The assumption is that Brown will linger on to the bitter end, carry the blame for the party's catastrophic performance to his political grave, after which a new leader will try and resuscitate Labour in opposition. But just because an air of pure doom envelops both party and leader at the moment, it doesn't mean the end is necessarily nigh. Two things (at least) could happen to radically change the picture before an election next year (the price for a post Jan 10 election is [1.21]).

The first is that the economy wakes from its coma and quickly gets to its feet - unlikely, but not impossible, given the sums of money thrown at it by Britain and America. As Inability is all about the economy, he would find himself suddenly and miraculously looking like the saviour of the nation.

The second is that the parliamentary Labour party takes fright and puts him out of his misery.

This week alone Brown has faced rebellion from his own MPs over the Gurkhas right to live in Britain, derision over his failed attempt to address MP's expenses and a very unwise foray onto Youtube, seen the Sun officially turn against him, and heard Nick Robinson on the Today programme describe how even foreign leaders, normally a model of diplomacy and protocol, are treating Brown as though he's not going to be around for long.

Having sieved this intelligence, the backbenchers may then decide that by remaining loyal then many of them are not going to be needing their second homes any more, so they'd better get rid of him sharpish and take their chances with another leader. Opinion polls are currently forecasting around a 10% swing to the Tories, which would see almost half of the current Labour MPs at the Job Centre. And there's nothing like self-interest to spur a politician into action.

Who that leader might be and whether he would fare any better is just another parlour game for the time being, and eventually we shall find out whether poor Mr Brown has great capabilities or not. The current headlines firmly suggest the later, so the least he could hope for is something to take him off the front pages for a while. For Brown, pig flu cant get here fast enough.