Brown chickened out. I’m really not surprised – he is simply too cautious to do it, and took too long to make a decision. And I was right that he wouldn’t dare call an election. He is scared of the people.

If he was to take a snap election, he should have called it far sooner. If he didn’t want to call an election, he shouldn’t have allowed the speculation to grow. He should have put the Young Turks pushing for an election down, and used his conference speech in order to say he wouldn’t call an election because he wanted to put his programme for government into practice to allow the people to judge him on what he had done. If he is “just Gordon”, that is what he would have done, rather than spinning so much for so long.

To refuse to call an election when Labour had leads of up to 11 points in the polls would have immeasurably increased his prestige. But allowing the speculation to continue for so long, especially encouraged by key Brownite ministers, only to then decide not to call an election after the polls were no longer so favourable, has just shown him to be weak and indecisive. He picked precisely the wrong thing to do. Had he used his conference speech to say that there wouldn’t be an election, it is likely that the Conservative party conference would not have been quite so successful for them, with the spectre of an autumn election no longer hanging over them.

He has bottled it, based on polls giving the Conservatives a lead of three points. This has undoubtedly caused him a lot of harm. He is no longer “tough” and “decisive” but precisely the opposite. He has shown himself to lack the courage to go to the people without a great poll lead. This was precisely a risk he had absolutely no need to take. He could have refused to encourage the election rumours, but he did. And whilst this precise fiasco is unlikely to be well remembered by the public, it will undoubtedly be brought up by the media next time. And the fact that Brown chickened out will mar his spin on being a strong leader.

Brown refuses to have a referendum on the EU Constitution Reform Treaty, and he changes his mind over having an election after stoking it to a fever-pitch because the polls, the polls are falling! Is Brown scared of the people and of democracy itself? It certainly seems so.

UPDATE: This isn’t something I usually say, but well done to the Lib Dems for producing this video of the Grand Old Duke Brown of Kirkaldy [via Norfolk Blogger].

Image: Robin Sharp via Theo Spark