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Or is Chris Hune indulging in a little wishful thinking?

Chris Huhne, the Lib Dem spokesman on Home Affairs, has written an article for LibDem Voice that seeks to reassure activists the party will in fact do better at the next election than the prophets of doom suggest.

He writes: “The new conventional wisdom at Westminster is that the Conservatives are heading for an overall majority at the next election, and that the Liberal Democrats are therefore bound to take a pounding. On this view, the Lib Dems’ fortunes are inextricably linked with Labour and we are supposed to lose seats as we did when the Conservatives won in 1951, 1970 and 1979.

I don’t believe a word of it. After each Liberal Democrat advance – in 1997, 2001 and now 2005 – the commentariat has written our obituary. But we went on to increase our seats at the next election. We can and will do the same again.”

The general structure of the argument is that a swing which provides for a narrow Conservative majority doesn’t cause as much damage as is commonly believed, especially when you factors in LibDem gains from Labour. Added to that the ‘first-term incumbancy factor’ that LibDems have seemed to have recently, and he concludes that the overall number of MPs serving under Nick Clegg will remain the same.

This is a well-written and well-referenced article (few senior politicians deal in actual psephology, preferring tub-thumping), but I wonder if it still tinged with a little optimism. I don’t believe that the Tory majority will be huge at the next election, but i would not surprise me if the swing radically exceeded the 6.9% Huhne uses for his example (which would give the Conservatives a single-figure majority).

My other concern is that this looks at the three-way game - Lib/Lab/Con. As I suggested to Ed Davey, the Lib Dem prospects are actually worst in Scotland and Wales where, outside the capital cities that have a base of LibDem councillors, there is already an alternative to both the Tories and Labour in the SNP and Plaid Cymru. This could cost Nick Clegg up to three MPs in Wales and even more in Scotland.

I think that Mr Huhne makes a strong case that reports of the death of the Liberal Democrats have been severely overstated, but I wonder if equalling (let alone increasing) their number of MPs on 2005 is still something of a bridge too far.

Betting note from Mike Smithson The current numbers on the Lib Dems on the Commons spread markets are 45-48 seats. So if Chris had a bet at £100 a seat and they got the 63 seats that they currently have then he’d pick up £1,500.

Morus

What’s the point of ousting Gord if Labour would do no better?

It seems an age ago, but it was only the end of July, that David Miliband produced his famous Guardian article that was seen as a challenge to Brown’s leadership. The Foreign Secretary denied it of course but the widespread assumption was that he was a laying down a marker for a future leadership challenge.

Since then, until today, there has been no proper polling evidence about the effect of such a leadership change on Labour’s election prospects.

I have argued that the best way of showing this is through the “named leader question” - when pollsters like ICM and Populus ask how people would vote with Brown/Miliband as Labour leader against Cameron’s Tories. As I was hoping Populus did ask the question in its latest survey and the figures are out this morning.

This is how Peter Riddell reports it in the Times: “The new Populus poll for The Times, undertaken at the weekend, suggests that David Miliband would not necessarily do any better than Mr Brown. When voters are asked to imagine that Mr Miliband replaces Mr Brown, Labour is shown on 26 per cent, against 27 per cent now. The Tories are on 46 per cent, against 43 per cent, and the Liberal Democrats on 16, against 18, per cent. These figures are comparable, with an adjustment for voters reluctant to declare their preferences and a reallocation of some don’t-knows, though the normal voting intention question does not mention leaders by name”

This form of polling is controversial but it did prove to be prescient about Brown before he took over.

There’s no point in Labour going through the agony of ousting Gordon and electing a new leader unless that would help their electoral prospects.

Mike Smithson

How will he compare to Obama and Palin in his acceptance speech?

John McCain has many qualities, but being a big-venue orator is not first amongst them. Having seen Obama put on a remarkable show last Thursday in Denver, John McCain saw his VP pick, Governor Palin, deliver a superb address last night. She managed to enthuse the Convention Center to an extent not seen previously this week, and has received glowing reviews in the midst of a hostile media storm over her private life.

Tonight, John McCain will accept his party’s nomination for the Presidency, and in doing so will mark the end of the longest and most expensive primary season in US electoral history. But as well as trying to match up to the rhetorical achievements of Barack Obama and Sarah Palin, McCain is also competing with a continuing hurricane on the Gulf Coast, and the beginning of the NFL season (the Redskins and the Giants kick off at 19:07 Eastern Time, and McCain is due to speak between 10 and 11 pm EST). The game was moved forward by 90 minutes at the request of NBC.

Warm-up acts tonight include former Homeland Security Secretary (and former PA Governor) Tom Ridge, Governor Pawlenty (MN), and Senators Ensign (NV), Martinez (FL), Brownback (KS), and Graham (SC). The nominee will be introduced by his wife, Cindy McCain.

In other news, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has resigned over his many criminal charges - this is good news for Obama.

Once again, I may not manage to stay up until the small hours, so please be patient with overnight clearing of the moderation box.

Morus

Is is time for a McCain-style gamble?

Charles Clarke, the former Home Secretary, has launched another not-so-subtle attack on Gordon Brown, claiming in the New Statesman that Labour “is destined to disaster if we go on as we are” and that “we will not allow that to happen”.

In spite of some fairly significant pressing concerns about the Party and the Government, fully a quarter of the article is given over to complaints that the term ‘Blairite’ is being used as a slur - to demonise those who disagree with the Prime Minister, by tying them to an imagined agenda of social policy out-of-step with the Labour Party. Clarke concludes his article with two telling sentences: “There is no Blairite ideology” and “similarly, there is no Blairite plot”.

It is difficult to know how Brown should respond to this. It is not the first time that the former Home Secretary has issued a rather insipid challenge, and in the absence of any serious threat amidst the rumblings, I am not sure that dignifying Clarke with a direct response would be wise. And yet he needs to do something - to simply allow this sort of talk the license to snipe away at his Premiership diminishes him as the leader of his party.

So what response? Much has been made of the re-shuffle that never was, and might now never be. Miliband and Purnell apparently said they would resign rather than move, other Labour stalwarts have threatened revolt if former-Tory Sean Woodward replaced Des Browne at Defence. Now Alistair Darling is giving two-day interviews to the previously-Brownite Guardian, to justify his position in public. The received wisdom is that, with a by-election pending, the PM is simply too weak politically to reshuffle his Cabinet.

Across the Atlantic, there have been plaudits for John McCain’s choice of Vice Presidential running-mate - a selection so bold, that even some serious concerns could not override the game-changing nature of his decision. Even where people questioned the prudence of picking Sarah Palin, no-one could deny it was gutsy. I wonder if things are now so stagnant for Brown, that he needs to do something similarly drastic.

What would be as monumental for Brown as picking Palin? I think he needs to ‘throw an elbow’ and to do it on live television. To put one of the Big Beasts of his Cabinet to the sword would remind the Party of the ruthessness he showed in attaining the Premiership, albeit that has been absent in occupying Number 10. It would give him some momentum, and perhaps quell the less-than-committed attempts to oust him.

If Charles Clarke is right, and there is no alternative Blairite social agenda, and no Blairite plot, what does Brown have to lose by moving against David Milband in a reshuffle?

Of course, there is a chance that Miliband might immediately raise an army of 70-odd backbenchers’ signatures against the PM, but I’m not sure that he has that sort of grassroots support within the PLP. If shortly after Conference, having been forced to swear loyalty to the PM in a prime time address, would a complete volte-face be politically possible for the Foreign Secretary? It would look like bitterness if he had been sacked from the Cabinet - and if it were the result of being offered a promotion (to Chancellor) over which he chose to resign, he would perhaps look somewhat petty. After his Guardian article, I am less convinced than ever that David Miliband is prepared to move openly against Brown.

The fact is that Charles Clarke is symptomatic of the attacks that the PM receives from his own side - no alternative, of policy or of leader, is ever publically suggested. Nigel Griffiths said today that “In 2007, he [Clarke] and Alan Milburn set up a think tank called 2020 Vision. It didn’t think, but it certainly tanked”. I wonder if ‘Blairite’ opposition to Brown has been, as I think Charles Clarke admits, completely mischaracterised and overstated, and whether moving to crush them publically might just be the filip that Brown’s premiership needs.

But would he dare?

Morus