How Labour Could Still Win

Kevin Maguire has seen Peter Kellner's article in the Fabian Review (out on 15th September), and it goes like this:

(1) Political geography favours Gordon Brown. If the parties got the same national vote, Labour still wins 80 more seats. Cameron needs two million more votes for the same number of seats. To draw level Cameron needs a six per cent lead, a hefty 10 per cent for an overall majority.

(2) Every government from the mid-50s to mid-90s suffering mid-term blues enjoyed a significant poll recovery.

(3) This isn't the John Major era. Labour losing 40 per cent of its votes in Crewe and Glasgow East was crushing until compared with the Cons collapsing 80 per cent in Dudley West in 1994.

(4) Labour woes are fundamentally different. Black Wednesday was a Tory error and signed Major's death warrant but voters accept global food, fuel and credit problems aren't Brown's fault but want more help.

(5) Tony Blair earned stratospheric approval ratings nudging 70 per cent in 1995 and 1996 while Cameron's occasionally reach 50 per cent. The Tory leader is seen as shallow, out-of-touch and lightweight as well as likeable, caring and competent.

(6) The mob hidden behind Cameron still terrify voters and the Tory Party's seen as a bunch of untrustworthy right-wing loons.

Kellner may well be proved right.

And even if not, the Tories are only on course to be the largest party in a hung Parliament, dependent on the SNP for the majority.

That, one might add, means an end to all talk of extra powers for Holyrood. Salmond's price will be extra cash for Scotland, and especially for SNP-voting parts of Scotland. A price which Cameron would have to pay, because he would have to, no matter what he had to do to find the money.

And that, from the Tories point of view, is the better option. Labour might yet win after all.

Not that it would make any political difference if they didn't. It wouldn't change who was really pulling the strings. It wouldn't even change the composition of the Government all that much. So who cares?