Brown bottles it

4.28.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Sat 6th Oct 2007

Gordon Brown

So the news of the day is there is no General Election this November, Brown has bottled it and I am rubbish at predicting elections!

Gordon has obviously looked at the polls and seen he will not win, or at least not match Blair, and has announced that there will be no election. He is going to look very silly now after allowing all the speculation, allowing Cameron to dare him to call it and pulling back.

It has been quite a useful exercise for the Liberal Democrats (and I guess the Conservatives) in having a reality check on their readiness. I have spent much of the last ten days dashing between target seats making sure they are as ready as possible (and generally they were ready).

Liberal Democrat Leader Sire Ming Campbell has said "Gordon Brown has clearly lost nerve". He has also made the case strongly for fixed term Parliaments. It would be a much fairer and better system for holding elections. You can read more of Ming's comments at www.mingcampbell.org.uk