With speculation that Gordon Brown is going to call a snap election (he ought to, if he’s wise: economic problems are building up), blogger EurSoc looks at the prospects for the Conservatives. He’s not optimistic:

With a General Election possibly weeks away, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has outmanoeuvred the opposition Conservative Party on every front. On crime, immigration and the economy – areas one would imagine the Tories would be able to seize the initiative – the new PM has left his opponents floundering. It’s not all down to Brown’s strategic brilliance, however. The Tories themselves are as much to blame.

The whole thing is well worth reading, particular the reprint of an earlier EurSoc post from September, and particularly this:

Egged on by columnists in the Guardian and cheered by positive treatment from the BBC, the Conservative leader has pushed a largely reluctant party towards the centre, ditching on the way traditional Tory values like support for Grammar schools, Euroscepticism and pledges to cut taxes. Any suggestion from the party faithful (or rather, the Tory “fringes”) that the Government should be tackled on its appalling record of mismanagement of immigration (for example) has been shouted down as the Siren Song of the conservative right, a “spent force” obsessed with immigration, layabouts and crime that cannot win an election. “Elections can only be won from the centre”, runs the warning in the Economist – never mind that in France, a country well to the left of Britain, an unapologetic right-winger has swept to Presidential victory on a raft of blatantly right-wing campaign pledges. And try telling it to Brown! Yes, he’s proposing to govern from the centre. But never mind Cameron’s policies. This is more important: How did the Tories allow themselves to be backed into the position whereby their opponent can treat himself to populist policies from the left and the tough end of the right – while ensuring that every time the Conservatives try the same trick they are jeered and dismissed as cranks? And why, if the country is no longer receptive to old-fashioned right-wing thinking on immigration and crime, is Gordon Brown racing ahead in the opinion polls after promising policy on those very lines? We cautiously welcomed Cameron’s election as party leader, but warned that the Conservatives should never make the fatal mistake of allowing their enemies to choose their leaders or their policy for them. The New Conservatives flirted with the media wing of the New Establishment. No doubt it was flattering to be treated as a human being by interviewers on the Today show for a change, and surely it is agreeable to exchange ideas on policy with prominent thinkers at Notting Hill dinner parties. But all along Her Majesty’s Opposition were being undermined and having their options narrowed.

Indeed they were.