How much does this hurt Brown?

A relaxed, confident looking David Cameron has just been on the BBC hitting all the right notes about Gordon Brown’s climb-down over the election date. For Brown, the next few weeks will be excruciating. He is being denounced as weak by all and sundry while his reputation for straight-talking is in tatters. Never again will his opponents cower in front of him.

The $64,000 question is whether this error by Brown will actually weigh on the minds of voters as they go to the polls in 2009. Labour MPs have been fanning out across the TV studios this afternoon to dismiss this as a mere Westminster story claiming that it will all be forgotten by then. But even if this is the case the last few weeks have been very helpful to Cameron. The threat of the election united the Tories and meant that the leadership could distil the work of the policy groups with a minimal amount of fuss.