Has Chancellor Darling’s siege Budget done enough to save the British economy? Probably.
Has it done enough to save Gordon Brown’s premiership? Possibly not.
The usual informed sources tell me that the Prime Minister has only a 50-50 chance of surviving Labour’s annual conference in September.
They said that last year, and I disagreed with them. I was convinced he’d see it through, and so he did.
But this time, I’m not so sure. Opinion poll evidence is hardening against the government week by week.
The “Brown bounce” of last autumn disappeared faster than snow in June, replaced by voter animosity as bad as anything in the Blair years.
The question now being asked at Westminster and in the labour movement is: “What must we do to avert annihilation at the polls next summer?”
And the conclusion that some MPs and union leaders draw is that Gordon Brown has to go, before he drags Labour down to its most crushing defeat since 1983.
Only his departure can draw the venom from the public’s view of the government, it is argued.
Who would replace him? In a crisis like this, talk of jumping a generation to new kids on the block is an unaffordable luxury.
It would have to be a safe pair of hands. Either Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary and perpetual bridesmaid, or Health Secretary Alan Johnson, the former posties’ union leader.
I’d prefer Quiffy Al. He knows his party and his people, and he cuts a credible figure in so-called Middle England. The Tories would find it hard to land blows on him.
But will it come to that? I still find it hard to believe. Gordon Brown waited too long for the keys to Number 10 to loosen his iron grip now.
And voters would be rightly angry with a ruling party that changed Prime Ministers without an election not just once but twice – in less than three years.
Ir’n Broon would only go after agonised, private soul-searching that led him to the same conclusion reached by his critics: only by sacrificing his premiership can he save his party. And that’s wishful drinking.
After Brown’s hideous Smeargate week, David Cameron quoted Harold Wilson’s famous remark that “a week is a long time in politics”, adding smugly: “If a week is a long time, then a year is eternity.”
From Here to Eternity – with the Tories? A horror movie. Five years of him would be longer than eternity. The prospect is appalling.