Is Jackie Ashley right – is it now “Emergency Labour”?

I thought that we could not let this day pass by without recalling that it was exactly a year ago, on October 6th 2007, that Gordon Brown recorded his fateful interview with Andrew Marr calling off a late autumn general election. Everything about the current political situation derives from that point which saw a U-turn in both Brown and David Cameron’s fortunes.

For the extraordinary media honeymoon that Brown had enjoyed until then came to a sharp end – driven, looking back, by his refusal to concede what was clear to the world that Labour’s changing position in the polls was the reason that there had been a change of mind.

From that moment on the electorate and the media viewed Brown in a very different way, the tag of “ditherer” has been firmly attached to him, and he has simply been unable to recover. For the lack of a bit of candour people stopped believing him and when that happens it’s usually terminal.

So moving on a year and in her Monday column this morning the once super Brown-loyalist, Jackie Ashley, seeks to get to the heart of the re-shuffle and where Brown and his party now stand.

She writes: “.If you look at the polls, the public wants Emergency Labour to see the country through this crisis..Labour’s problem is that the polls are equally eloquent about what should happen next. After thanking Brown for quelling the storm, the public wants to boot him out. He can only deal with that by moving on from Emergency Labour and providing a sense of direction.”

Will he be able to do that? How is the Mandy move going to shape up? Will Brown’s new Business Secretary end up being his executioner as the Spectator’s Fraser Nelson has so eloquently suggested?

We should get the first polling reaction to the latest developments this evening with the October survey by Populus for the Times.

Mike Smithson