Brown says "no election".
It's a joke. The Tories, trailing in the polls, are forced to pretend that they want Brown to call a snap election that they are almost certain to lose. It was an election that I never believed Brown would call. If we learned anything about Brown during all those years when he was waiting for Blair to hand over it is that he is a patient man.
And now that he has finally announced that he is not going to do the opportunistic thing and have a snap election and take advantage of his position in the polls, David Cameron has said that he has shown "great weakness and indecision", and had made a "humiliating retreat".
This is why I don't think Cameron will ever lead this country, he has a propensity for overstatement that borders on the pantomimic.
The truth is that Cameron would have to be suicidal to have genuinely wanted to fight an election against a brand new Prime Minister who is riding high in the polls.
The truth, despite Tory yellings, is that there is no precedent which demands that Brown "win a mandate" from the British people. In Britain, unlike in the United States, we elect governments, not Presidents. This is why when John Major took over from Margaret Thatcher there was no need for him to race to the polls to have his Premiership confirmed, because the people of Britain had elected a Conservative government, not Margaret Thatcher. This is why in our system the Prime Minister is referred to as "the first amongst equals", because the Prime Minister can, in practice if seldom in actuality, be overruled by the cabinet.A series of high-profile events in the House of Commons this week, as MPs return to Westminster after the summer recess, will be used by the Tories and Liberal Democrats to condemn Brown.
The battle lines were drawn last night when Brown finally ended months of speculation about an early poll, which had reached fever pitch during the Labour and Tory conferences.
In an interview on The Andrew Marr Show today the Prime Minister will rule out an election before 2009.
'I'll not be calling an election and let me explain why. I have a vision for change in Britain and I want to show people how in government we are implementing it,' he will say.
'Over the summer months we have had to deal with crisis, we have had to deal with foot and mouth, we have had terrorism, we have had floods, we have had financial crisis. Yes, we could have had an election on competence and I hope people will have understood that we have acted confidently.
'I want the chance in the next phase of my premiership to develop and show people the policies that are going to make a huge difference and show the change in the country itself.'
But Cameron will play his cheap political games and act as if Brown has run away from a fight that, in truth, Cameron never wanted.
Brown's inner circle are well prepared for the game playing that will follow:
As I said when commenting on Cameron's speech to conference, I never believed that Brown was going to be foolhardy enough to rush into an election, it's just not his style.Cabinet ministers said Brown had made the right decision. But ministers are bracing themselves for a backlash after Brown allowed cabinet colleagues to speculate about a poll in what was seen as an attempt to undermine the Tories.
One member of the cabinet told The Observer: 'We will have a difficult week, or possibly a difficult few weeks. But think of the backlash if we had gone for an election and seen our majority cut to 20. Gordon has done exactly the right thing.'
Cameron may act shocked, but that illustrates his political naivety. And how little he appears to understand the opponent that he is facing. This has always been Cameron's problem, he is the perfect adversarial foil for Blair, but it's not Blair that he is facing. This underlines one of the greatest problems that the Tories always face when it come to elections, they always appear to be fighting the last election rather than the next one.
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