Looking ahead to after the vote

Am sitting in a Bristol car park waiting for the David Cameron rally that rounds off his campaign. Actually, rally over-states it. It’s been designed to be a relatively small affair.

No-one does triumphalism in these circumstances…he is trying to convince people to help him over the line not pile another pointless vote on top of a fat pile.

Chatting to Labour candidates on the phone I find them relieved the worst nightmare might be over, thinking that they have avoided sinking to third place in share of the vote behind the Lib Dems.

A couple of people close to Gordon Brown said that in the event of a defeat he would hang around and see what was possible if he was less than 30 MPs shy of the Tories’ tally. Though both insisted they’d had no such specific conversation with himself on the subject.

Most think Gordon Brown in defeat would not want to leave immediately but would want to shape the succession, to “do a Michael Howard,” giving the party time to size up a successor not tumble into an early contest. But colleagues may have other ideas. 

Lib Dems say they don’t detect the slippage that some recent polls are suggesting though they admit there could be people drifting off in Lab/Con marginals, they think they’re holding on to what they’ve gained in the Lib Dem surge in the target seats. They insist there have been no informal or formal approaches from Tories about post-election deals. Though they have some useful Tory phone numbers to ring plugged into their Blackberries if needed.

In addition to the civil servants ready to be deployed if parties need help negotiating compromise agreements on policies, Whitehall has also been checking out office space where negotiations can take place if they involve the two parties currently not in power and who don’t have access to No 10. 

Amongst Tories you hear of plans to project Friday’s result (almost whatever it is) as such a convincing and unquestionable mandate that no-one will be able to challenge it without looking ludicrous – that’s the idea.

They have indeed studied images of Alex Salmond descending from the skies (from a helicopter) after the last Scottish parliament elections to declare his result (not that far over a quarter of MSPs) an unqualified triumph. The Tories are determined to pull off something similar, they hope with better basic material.

Most of the senior Tories I’ve spoken to in the last couple of days think they will get over the line into majority zone based on pulling some surprising seats off Labour even as they lose out in some surprising contests to the Lib Dems.

Interesting line I heard from Gordon Brown in his BBC Radio 5 Nicky Campbell interview and phone in.

Gordon Brown said that the TV debates had “clouded” the policy debate.

He feels, as do members of his team, that the pre-hype and post-hype sucked policy discussion out of the campaign. He sounded as though he was conducting a post mortem of a failed campaign and he looked like it too – proving how quickly you can forget even the most painfully learnt lesson about how cameras are always on you, even when you’re giving radio interviews.