Neither Liz Truss nor Rishi Sunak would name Gordon Brown as an inspiration, but I wonder if whoever becomes PM next month might take a lesson from Brown’s premiership and call a snap general election. This might sound like a frankly mad idea. Inflation is soaring and dreadful energy bills are about to hit. The Conservatives are behind Labour in the polls, demoralised and divided. Surely a new prime minister going to the country would be committing spectacular electoral suicide? Maybe. But politics is all about making the least bad choice, and I can’t help wondering if an immediate election wouldn’t be the least bad option for that new PM.
Back to Brown. Younger readers might not know and even older ones may have forgotten the misjudgement that doomed him as prime minister: the decision not to call an early election. Brown became PM in June 2007, succeeding Tony Blair and inheriting a third-term Labour majority of 66.
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