My work contacts fall, more or less, into three camps: public sector, media and large corporate. And at the moment, two of those are in something of a frenzy.
The media contacts are desperately throwing together election plans, where they had expected to have at least six months to work them up. Indeed, to some extent, there’s an air of resignation that if the election is called, there just won’t be time to make the best ideas happen.
The public sector contacts seem either desperate to kick jobs off, perhaps before ‘purdah’ kicks in; or they’re getting understandably hesitant, on the possibility there may be a change of government, and their grand initiative doesn’t happen at all.
I’m currently running two separate ‘to do’ lists: one for ‘if he does’, one for ‘if he doesn’t’. So I’m very keen to hear an announcement, one way or the other. But here’s the problem – if we aren’t to have a November election, there isn’t a proper ‘no’ announcement. It’s only a ‘not yet’. Life just rolls on. And all the time, in the backs of our minds, we’re all left wondering if it’ll now be a spring election instead. The uncertainty scales back, but doesn’t disappear.
Depoliticising the electoral cycle suddenly seems like a good idea. In fact, if Gordon is looking to define ‘Brownism’, maybe depoliticisation is it.