Brown's election choices

Amid rumours of a snap election to give the next Labour leader a mandate as Prime Minister, the other main parties have been bullish about their readiness and willingness to fight one. Their brash confidence perhaps stems less from assured self-belief than the near certainty that they won’t in fact have to - even if the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats could afford an election in the next year or so, Labour as we know it might implode if it tried.

So it probably won’t bother, especially since Gordon Brown, the prime-minister-in-waiting, won’t necessarily feel obliged to seek a fresh mandate at all. The current incumbent, Tony Blair, might have promised before the last election to remain in office for a full third term, but few believed that Brown would not at some point take over, and the government has long been a partnership, at least in presentation, between the two great men.

If Brown does call an early election before 2010, therefore, it will be a tactical choice to exploit weaknesses in the Conservative position. The Tories might have secured a lead in opinion polls, but their Leader, David Cameron, faces a trickier twelve months ahead than he did this time last year. While 2006 was a year of reinvigorating a damaged brand, the future will be full of tough policy choices aimed at keeping both his own party and moderate public opinion on board project Cameron.

Alongside speculations concerning snap polls, there has been much talk of a swath of new policies in the early days of a Brown premiership, and it would clear up much of the cloud currently hanging over British politics if these included party finance reform. In order to be seen to be both transparent and fair, comprehensive reform would require the patient building up of consensus and compromise between the main parties, but it might well suit Brown to get it over with quickly, thus allowing him to exploit any downturn in Tory fortunes by calling a fresh poll, as Blair did in 2001 and 2005, the year before one is due, and once the parties have (as seems likely) been partially bailed out by the state. For Labour and thus Brown himself, however, elections in the next 18 months might be suicidally too soon.