Feeling lucky, punk?

If there's one thing that Brown's speech told us, it was that he's going for the statesman-above-party-politics look which makes such a blatant sabotage unlikely, but allowing the rumours to continue unabated is having the desired effect of putting the willies up the Tories in advance of their annual gathering.

Peter Riddell reckons that either 1st or 8th November are the dates of choice, and the bandwagon certainly seems to be gaining momentum. RecessMonkey reports on new jobs in the Labour Party being advertised in the Guardian, indicating that election machine is gearing up.

Meanwhile in his address to Conference this morning, Labour Party treasurer Jack "I know NUFFINK" Dromey said that the Labour finances are in order for whenever the election is called and yesterday delegates were issued with "election packs." Apparently these contained new Voter ID sheets (what they do instead of canvassing - a sort of market research exercise) of their usual PhD-style complexity. Coincidence?

Fraser Nelson of the Spectator remains sceptical - Brown believes that he only has one election in him (how so?), and holding it in November runs the risk of his authority disappearing as soon as he returns to Parliament as effectively a "lame duck" PM. If the PLP is loyal at the moment it is due to the honeymoon period of the Gord, yes, but also because they don't want any instability in advance of a November or spring poll.

Another consideration is the Labour brethren north of the border, who are looking apprehensively at the successes of the SNP. The Judge John Deed of Scottish politics (he's gonna do it his way!) apparently reckons the SNP could double their presence at Westminster, based on recent polling. As well as this, the boundary changes reduce Brown's current majority of sixty-odd to effectively 40 in the current House of Commons. Factor in the six more seats that the SNP reckon they could take and you're looking at something around a 34 majority even before you've factored in any kind of swing away from Labour. 

Nevertheless, according to ConservativeHome, the Tories have taken emergency measures to get all their candidates in place in advance of a snap election, with decisions to be made about what is to be done about suspended MP Andrew Pelling and Bojo, who is under pressure to quit his Henley seat in advance of his campaign for the London mayoralty.

The recent discussions on party fortunes, the resurgent SNP, and opinion polls indicate that Things Can Only Get Worse if an election isn't called. But with Lady Thatch and Norman Tebbitt himself making trouble for Dave, the question is: getting worse for whom?