This noon I got a call from the local Liberal Democratic party, of which I’m a member. They were asking me if, in view of the impending General Election, I would put a poster in my window or do various other things like canvassing. I said that I’d do as much as I was able to do.
Then Gordon Brown punctured everyone’s bubble by ruling out a General Election this year, barring unforeseen circumstances.
What a let-down! The Tories and LibDems are now able to accuse him of wimping out. It may be that, like Jim Callaghan in 1978, Brown has just blown his electoral chances. Callaghan decided not to call an election in 1978, when Labour was relatively popular. By 1979, when “Labour’s not working” was the Tories’ cry under Margaret Thatcher, Milk-Snatcher, Callaghan lost in a landslide.
I wonder if Gordon Brown will do the same when he finally goes to the country. I suppose that if the polls are bleak, he may even do a John Major and wait until the last possible day under the Representation of the People Act to call an election.
And most of us remember what happened to John Major in that election.
Our right-wing ideologue Coalition show every sign of clinging to power whilst throwing out the race card, lying, parading themselves, rejecting their own govt commissioned studies and so on.
At present polls show almost a ten percent swing against them, however.
At least things are more clear-cut downunder: Labor has not supported the war in Iraq etc.
Well, at leas you have to have an election before the end of the year. We don’t have to have one for 3 years.
We don’t have to have it that soon: it can be held as far off as late January.
People are pretty irate if it’s too different from the three years on the dot.
Tomorrow is the third anniversary of the last Federal election day, yet this current one has yet to be called…