TRICKY GORDON?:

Poll blow for Brown as Blair refuses to back him (George Jones, 25/09/2006, Daily Telegraph)

Gordon Brown's hopes of being acclaimed as Tony Blair's successor at this week's Labour conference are severely dented today by a poll for The Daily Telegraph showing a sharp fall in the number of voters who think he would be a good prime minister.

The Chancellor, who will today stake his claim to No 10 by promising to govern from the centre and not retreat from New Labour, lags behind David Cameron, the Tory leader, and even Mr Blair as the voters' preferred choice. [...]

While he is seen as decisive and effective, public confidence in him as the next prime minister is on the slide. Earlier in the year, 36 per cent of voters thought he would prove to be a good prime minister. That figure has fallen to 27 per cent, while the proportion thinking he would probably fail as prime minister has risen from 33 per cent to 44.

The Conservative leader has a five-point lead over Mr Brown as "the best prime minister" and Mr Blair was well ahead of him when the public was asked to choose between them.

The poll shows that Mr Brown has considerable work to do to improve his image. He is seen as a highly divisive and partisan figure, even "morose and introverted".

Didn't stop Richard Nixon....

MORE:
Brown to stake all on Middle England (Philip Webster, 9/25/06, Times of London)

GORDON BROWN will lay claim to the Labour crown today by reassuring Middle England voters that his Government will never retreat from reform but entrench its place in the Centre.

The Chancellor, making the most important speech of his life at the Labour conference in Manchester, intends to set out his political philosophy and his personal manifesto to become Labour’s sixth Prime Minister and create a “new Britain”.

In the face of polls casting doubt on his electability and fears that he may take Labour to the left, Mr Brown will promise to change the way that Britain is governed, ushering in a “new politics” to make Government more accountable to Parliament and public, while carrying forward new Labour’s modernisation crusade in an even more radical way. He will talk of a ten-year programme to meet Britain’s challenges.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 24, 2006 11:36 PM