CCHQ is watching developments with a mixture of excitement and fear.  The last thing they want is to see Gordon ousted before the election…

Guido strongly believes that one of the strategic calculations made by the Tories that determined their decision to start the election campaign on Monday was to deliberately make it more difficult to dump Gordon. It would be argued internally in the Labour Party, Tory strategists hoped, that they couldn’t dump Gordon in the middle of an election campaign.  It was not as if Clarke’s crew hadn’t clearly signalled at Christmas their intention to make one last attempt to oust Brown…

Back in 2008 after a few bruising PMQs when Gordon was looking wobbly, Team Cameron deliberately pulled their punches for fear of destabilising Gordon too early before an election.  They know that their best hope of a landslide is if Gordon leads the Labour Party to a crushing defeat at the general election.  Gordon will cost Labour MPs their marginal seats which could be otherwise be saved with any other Labour leader…