Nothing Has Changed So Why The Fuss?
Yesterday, Gordon Brown ended months of constant media speculation by informing the BBC that he would not call an early General Election this year or next, unless extraordinary circumstances arose.
Personally I thought that Mr Brown would call an early election. If I was him, I would have wanted to secure a mandate to do things differently to the previous manifesto I had been elected under.
However, that said, I am not Gordon Brown, and since he will not be doing anything substantially different to his predecessor Tony Blair (just trying desperately to appear different,) and it’s not as though he’s sticking that closely to the current Labour manifesto anyway by refusing to hold a Referendum on the EU Constitution – it therefore can be assumed he probably does not need a new mandate after all.
Today, Gordon Brown claimed that even if he had chosen to call an early election, he would have won it. While he is probably right of course, in his assumption there is an underlying arrogance – believing and naturally assuming that he and his party would win. But then, as has been pointed out many times before, the underlying electoral system favours Labour maintaining power, and there is very little sign of that irregularity changing any time in the foreseeable future.
It does however seem extremely dubious that just the day after two opinions polls were released in national papers showing the Conservatives neck and neck with, or ahead of Labour, Gordon Brown announces that he wishes to give the British people a chance to experience his ‘vision’ for the country and cancels out an early poll. Coincidence? I think not.
What this does mean for the future then? Well, firstly and perhaps most importantly, there will be no election and therefore no representative test of public opinion over the issue of the EU Constitution. It looks increasingly likely that Gordon Brown will deny the British people the Referendum his party’s manifesto promised, and therefore it will most likely be forced through Parliament without popular support.
Secondly, we will have to endure at least another two, if not three years of Labour incompetence and deceit – possibly even longer if the Conservatives temporary unity fractures as most likely it will. Much fuss has unfortunately been made over a completely non-event.
