Winners And Sinners

The price of poker is going up.

A year ago I bet that the Liberal Democrats would have fewer than 40 seats after the general election. I expected the Lib Dems to have only about 32 seats, and that most of their loss from the 46 they took in 1997 would shift over to the Conservatives.

My hypothesis over these past four years has been that the tactical voters who helped elect so many Liberal Democrats to the House of Commons in 1997 would not be voting for them to get the Tories out of office and John Major replaced.

Yesterday I put down a bet on the Liberal Democrats to increase their representation in the House of Commons. What caused me to hedge my earlier bet?

That since the election began, there has been an increase in the level of support for the Liberal Democrats, at the expense of the Conservatives.

Still, my bet with Guy Hands, who sold Labour seats to me at 82, is looking very good indeed.

Europe: My view is that the prime minister has just made the first strategic error in his campaign so far.

The Tories have thought that Europe was a winning issue for them; I've sharply disagreed. They have failed to look behind the headline figures of how unpopular Europe in general is, and how very unpopular the Euro specifically is.

On the former, our poll for the Times published on Thursday found a 51%/49% narrow majority (among those with a view) as to whether Britain should stay in or get out of the European Union.

On the latter, a massive 73%/27% say that were there to be a referendum on whether or not Britain should join the Single European Currency, they would vote to keep the pound sterling and reject joining with the continent in joining the Euro.

Originally I thought that the referendum would be held this year, in late October or early November, in the honeymoon after this election but before the introduction of the Euro on the continent, and the six months of chaos I expect to take place with vending machines, counterfeiting, banks running out, etc.

I said in a booklet for the Foreign Policy Centre, and then in a chapter in the Federal Trust booklet, "Britain and euroland: A collection of essays", that the government would win such a referendum, narrowly, because of the lessons I learned working with the prime minister and the foreign secretary during the 1975 European referendum, when they turned around 22 people in a hundred in just six months to win it.

On that basis, I thought last year that they could call it and win it. I no longer, after the petrol crisis, think they can. The prime minister thinks they can.

In the Financial Times this morning the prime minister was asked whether he could persuade voters to support British membership (in the Euro) and said: "Of course, provided you mount the argument well, provided we are setting out why it is economically and politically in Britain's interest."

I don't think he can. And if he doesn't think they can, with a clear lead, this conservative and cautious prime minister won't call it, for to do so, and lose it, would make him a "lame duck" prime minister, not something T. Blair would allow.

To move from 73% opposition today to 49%, and 27% support today to 51%, will require a swing of 24%, switching the views of 24 people in a hundred from now to the end of the campaign.

To get 51%, he would have to build on the 15% or so who strongly favour Britain's joining, not only with the 25% or so who say they and generally in favour if they thought it was in Britain's economic and political interest to join, who can be convinced, which would come to 40% support, but he'd have to convince another 10% -- 15% of the roughly 25% of the electorate who are generally opposed, and that's a whole lot tougher.

In 1975 there was a united front of the political parties, all the main ones; the media, all the national daily and Sunday newspapers; the business community, the main trade unions, the City, and most of the economic pundits.

This time the Tories won't be on side, a significant portion of Labour will be sceptical, if quiet about it a large chuck of the media is opposed, many business leaders, several key trade union leaders, and a very effective Business for Sterling pressure group.

Peter Mandelson spoke out at the Monday lunchtime meeting at the Labour Party conference that he was "certain" that the British public would vote on joining the single European currency when they decided to hold it.

I happened a guest speaker on a platform at the Labour Party conference the following Wednesday with Peter Mandelson, and took the opportunity to warn him that if he wanted a bloody nose from the British public all he had to say to them that he was "absolutely certain" that they would do what he told them to do when he told them to do it.

Other poll news: The computer "speaking clock" poll from Rasmussen Research is again featured in the Indy today, and shows Labour at 44% (down two), Tories 33% (up one) and the Lib Dems 16% (up three), and find that four out of five of the public are opposed to Labour's plan to have the private sector a central part of the solution to Britain's failing public services.

Thirteen days and counting.