Election

Gordon Brown is wooing middle class, middle England, middle income voters. This may not work. Indeed I doubt that it will. Labour faces defeat. The Tories face not winning outright. The Lib Dems face holding the balance of power. These are the dynamics of this election. To win an outright majority Cameron has to win an awful lot of seats. To lose their majority Labour does not have to lose that many. To hold the balance of power the Lib Dems need win no seats by their own effort, but quite a few may drop into their laps.

If Labour concentrate on the middle vote, they will fail. They must first secure the working class vote. Otherwise the BNP will eat into their vote and tip the seat to the Lib Dems where they are running a good second. For the Tories the problem is UKIP, especially in the heartlands. Votes for the anti-Europe party taken from the Tories where Lib Dems are a good second will tip the seat to Clegg. Where the Tories run second to the Lib Dems, UKIP will sap votes from the Tory challenge.

For Cameron to win he has to build a head of steam that sees off UKIP and the Lib Dems. For Brown to win (or not to lose outright, which would be seen as a victory) he must crush the BNP in his heartlands, see off the Scot Nats north of the border and stop the Lib Dem advance where they are close. To do all of that he must have the rock solid support of the working class of every ethnic origin from one end of the Kingdom to the other. Middle England, in this scenario is a bridge too far for Labour.