A buoyant Brown flirts with the vote

SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

Fresh off his Camp David meeting with President Bush—where the newly minted PM studiously refused to go casual (a subtle sign of cooling relations?) — Gordon Brown may soon be suiting up for a general election. Opinion polls show Labor with a nine point lead over David Cameron’s Tories. That’s got Labor in the mood for a vote many thought wouldn’t happen for more than a year.

We are making the necessary preparations for a general election so the party is ready to fight a winning campaign whenever the prime minister chooses to name the day,” Martin Salter, a vice-chairman of the party, told Reuters.

Bizarrely, the recent floods in Britain seem to have stained David Cameron as much as Brown. The Tory leader was heavily criticized for jaunting to Rwanda as his constituents fended off high water. Brown, meanwhile, has avoided the kind of obloquy that President Bush suffered in the wake of Katrina. He toured hard-hit areas and has managed to confine criticism to lower officials. Often criticized for being wooden, Brown is at least proving to be water resistant.