If I was a reform-minded Labour MP trying to persuade my like-minded colleagues to move against Gordon Brown, these are the arguments that I would deploy:
Things are as bad as the polls suggest: The latest ICM poll (which Pete blogged earlier) has the Tories on 47, twenty points ahead of Labour. Electoral Calculus predicts that on a crude swing this would lead to a Tory majority of more than 200. People tend to discount these numbers as traditionally the incumbent party recovers as the campaign goes on, as the election moves from being a referendum on the government to a choice between the parties. But given, as Mike Smithson has noted, that the Tory poll rating goes up every time Cameron is in the news, and Brown has the opposite effect on Labour’s numbers, there is no guarantee that Labour will close the gap enough during the campaign to prevent an epic defeat.
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