Cameron throws down election challenge despite impressive poll lead for Labour

By Andrew Grice, Political Editor

Monday, 1 October 2007

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Gordon Brown would secure a crushing majority of 126 if the latest opinion polls were reflected at a general election, according to an analysis for The Independent. As the Prime Minister discussed whether to call a 1 November election with close colleagues, the rolling "poll of polls", based on the last four surveys, puts Labour on 41 per cent, the Tories on 33 per cent and the Liberal Democrats on 15 per cent. Labour insiders said Mr Brown's decision was "finely balanced". Labour's lead in the key marginal seats that will decide the election is smaller than the headline figures and there are fears in the party's high command that a poll held in a period of bad weather and dark evenings could put Labour at a disadvantage by suppressing turnout.

And yesterday the officials who would run an election made an unprecedented appeal to the Prime Minister not to go ahead with one this autumn. John Turner, chief executive of the Association of Electoral Administrators, warned that the problems would be "probably the worst in living memory". He said more than one million people who had moved house or just reached the age of 18 would be disenfranchised because the new electoral register does not take effect until December. Teething problems with postal voting were still being ironed out.

Mr Turner told BBC 1's Politics Show: "Nobody sitting in my place could guarantee that it will be less than trouble-free, and the real problem is that we could run in to uncharted water."

Although Mr Brown will not announce his decision during the Tory conference which began yesterday, he is expected to have a high profile this week. He is to make a speech in London today to 300 international businessmen, which is intended to remind voters of "the choice" on who would best run the economy.

Labour strategists are delighted that the possible election appears to have prompted the Tories to rush out policy announcements such as cutting stamp duty and inheritance tax. They believe that if Mr Brown decides against an early poll, he might suffer some short-term criticism but would reap a long-term benefit by having several months to attack key Tory policies.

David Cameron challenged the Prime Minister yesterday to name the day and said he needed a new mandate from the voters. The Tory leader told the BBC's Andrew Marr: "We are ready for it, we have the candidates ready in our marginal seats. This week we will be setting out a very compelling alternative – not just saying what we want to achieve but saying how we want to achieve it."

But privately some Tory MPs admitted the party did not want an early election and their goal was to have such a good conference that Mr Brown would be forced to back off. The rolling "poll of polls" shows that Labour enjoyed a seven-point lead in August, which narrowed to two points by the end of the month after a Tory offensive but has now risen to eight points. The most recent four surveys would give Labour 388 seats, the Tories 198, the Liberal Democrats 36 and other parties 28.

John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University who compiled the figures, said the "Brown bounce" was solid. Unlike Harold Wilson, the Labour prime minister who called the 1970 election after favourable polls and lost, he said Mr Brown's lead appears to be the more or less a settled consequence of the change of prime minister.

"Labour shouldn't lose an early election, but whether it can 'hammer' the Tories still looks a lot less certain," he said adding that Mr Brown could not be 100 per cent confident of increasing Labour's majority of 66. "Equally the Tories are not in 'meltdown' – just stuck on the same vote as they got in 2005," he said.