Memories of John Major as the PM tries to prove he’s ‘doing something’

Gordon Brown's frantic tour of the regions to show he is 'doing something' about the recession to upstage the 'do nothing' David Cameron camp has left Labour MPs comparing him to John Major in the last year of his government.

Exactly 12 years ago today - on January 5, 1997 - Major went up to Leeds to speak to businessmen at the start of an intensive regional campaign to shore up support for his failing Conservative government. It did not stop Tony Blair and Brown romping home with a landslide victory later in the year.

Brown's polling figures are miles better than Major's were at the time - and he is not forced to go to the country this year - but his economic woes are if anything worse than Major's were in 1997 and his response to the accusations of being 'out of touch' with ordinary people is the same - go on a listening tour.

Today Chancellor Alistair Darling and Business Secretary Lord Mandelson are hosting a Regional Economic Council business summit attended by Brown. On Thursday, the Supreme Leader has ordered his minions to attend a special Cabinet in Liverpool.

Brown pointedly refused to rule out calling a general election in 2009 on the Andrew Marr show yesterday, despite being given repeated opportunities to end the speculation - as the Mole recommended weeks ago - by saying: "There will be no election this year." Brown opted instead for the bizarre formula "it is the furthest thing from my mind," which he repeated like a mantra until Marr gave up.

The odds are still on Brown going to the wire and holding on - like Major - until the last moment in 2010. But his refusal to dampen speculation yesterday only makes the Mole more suspicious that he would like to wrong-foot Cameron by announcing it at the party conference in October, just as he funked it in 2007.

The Mole wonders whether Brown was thinking of the Tom Paxton song from his university folk club days, The last thing on my mind. It opens with the lines: "It's a lesson too late for the learnin'/Made of sand, made of sand." Quite.

THE MOLE: BROWN ROADSHOW

FIRST POSTED JANUARY 5, 2009