Today's YouGov poll in the Sun with the Labour Party only 10 points behind the Tories reminded me of a Martin Rowson cover cartoon Boing on the September/October 2007 cover of Chartist, just before Labour started plummetting in the eyes of public opinion. Here's the link to the gallery highlighting all of Martin's covers capturing the direction of travel for democratic socialists (remember the words on your party card? The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party.) You can see that by May/June 2008 we all had that sinking feeling - that was before the May elections took place, or the Crewe and Nantwich and the Glasgow East by-elections.
Following the 2008 Conference bounce, we need to beware the shoals that lie ahead - quite apart from the Conservative Party conference next week, the Glenrothes by-election sometime before Christmas, there is the remaining legislation lurking in the current Parliament immediately after the Conference season comes to end in a week's time. In the light of recent developments, I not convinced there is any effectively strategic thinking going on around the Prime Minister looking at the politics of the policies in the context of closing the gap in the polls and winning a 4th term.
Let's hope the departure of Ruth Kelly from Transport will herald an appointment of someone tasked with dropping the third runway at Heathrow when the latest consultation comes to an end and improving the Party's appeal to the environmentally-aware. I'm not optimistic. (That would be just one infrastructure investment too far when the economy is being plunged into recession and oil prices are on a sharp upward trend recession or not.) The possible departure of Geoff Hoon to replace Peter Mandelson as Britain's European Commissioner will leave the position of chief whip open. The right in the Party are on the ascendent inside government. I can't see any evidence of Gordon Brown wanting to drop either 42-day detention plans for alleged terrorists, or ID cards, impose a windfall tax or be openly redistributive when it comes to the pre-budget report later this Autumn.
Just like a leading member of the Campaign Group of Socialist MPs whom I spoke to at some length at Conference, I wouldn't get hung up about a windfall tax as long as the PBR heralds significant redistribution through the tax and national insurance systems to low and middle income people from the rich.
This time last year, I suggested the Humpty Dumpty idea for Martin's cartoon for Chartist's November/December 2007 issue. If you look very carefully at Brown's right hand his fingers are crossed. That was Martin, not me. I feared Gordon couldn't recover. The next few weeks are going to require highly skilled, and possibly unprecedented, political steerage by our Prime Minister to navigate the shoals and see the polling gap narrowed and reversed.