2007-10-08

LONDON, Oct. 7 — After intense speculation, Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced Sunday that he would not go ahead with a general election, a decision apparently prompted by the unexpected success of the opposition Conservative Party’s annual conference last week.

Mr. Brown, the Labor Party leader, who had enjoyed a commanding position in the polls after taking over as prime minister from Tony Blair, told BBC television in an interview broadcast Sunday morning that he wanted more time to show Britain that he had a “vision for the future of this country.”

“I believe the public priority was not an election but that we got on with the job,” Mr. Brown said in the interview, recorded Saturday night from 10 Downing Street.

But political commentators quickly criticized Mr. Brown, saying he had allowed election fever to run out of control and then become unnerved by opinion surveys in the last two days that indicated that the Labor Party may have lost ground to the Conservatives, who are led by David Cameron. Mr. Brown had to make a decision by Tuesday on whether to call an election for Nov. 1.

Political analysts said internal party polling with results similar to a survey in the newspaper News of the World on Sunday showed that Labor was likely to lose a string of marginal seats.

The polling indicated that a Conservative Party pledge at its conference in Blackpool, England, last week to abolish the inheritance tax on property worth up to one million pounds, or about $2 million, could be a major factor in the areas with vulnerable seats.

Many of the swing seats are around London and in the prosperous southeastern part of England, where housing prices have skyrocketed in the last few years.

A wealthy donor, Michael Ashcroft, had given about $20 million to the Conservative Party, specifically aimed at the campaign for those marginal seats, party workers said.

The decision to say no to an election effectively canceled the progress Mr. Brown had made in persuading Britain in the last three months that he was a strong leader, said Jon Snow, the longtime anchor of Channel 4 television news, and a respected political commentator.

Among the strengths that Mr. Brown had shown was a fast and sober statement after botched terrorist attacks in London and Glasgow days after he took over as prime minister in late June; swift attention to devastating floods in the English countryside this summer, and firm stewardship during a foot-and-mouth crisis in the cattle industry.

He had also worked to distance himself from President Bush, a distinct difference in style to his predecessor, Mr. Blair.

The impressions of a new Mr. Brown could now be replaced by less flattering old impressions, Mr. Snow said.

“This revives old worries of his being indecisive, that he finds these things difficult,” Mr. Snow said. “It will take a long time to regain the poise and respect which he had built up. He has to start all over again.”

Mr. Brown, who was chancellor of the Exchequer for 10 years under Mr. Blair, does not need to call an election until 2010 under Britain’s parliamentary system. The Labor Party has more than a 60-seat majority in the 646-member Parliament, prompting some Labor backers to describe a rush to an election in November as unnecessary and dangerous.

If Mr. Brown had gone to the polls and lost, his term as prime minister would have been one of the shortest in British history.

Until last week, opinion surveys had indicated that Mr. Brown’s personal approval ratings were handily ahead of those of Mr. Cameron, who has led the Conservative Party for nearly two years.

But to the surprise of the Labor Party, the Conservative Party held a cohesive conference last week, and Mr. Cameron gave a persuasive and personal keynote address in which he barely looked at prepared notes, holding the floor for more than an hour.

The speech, in which Mr. Cameron, 40, called the family the best form of social security, received glowing reviews from many quarters.

While Mr. Cameron was doing well in Blackpool, Mr. Brown made a lightning trip to Iraq to visit British troops at their headquarters in Basra. There, Mr. Brown announced that 1,000 of those soldiers would return home by 2008, leaving 4,500 in Iraq.

The Iraq visit turned out to be a blunder. The Ministry of Defense told reporters that the 1,000 troops included 500 soldiers whose withdrawal had already been announced in July. Moreover, the ministry said 270 of those soldiers were already back in Britain.

That allowed the Conservatives to accuse Mr. Brown of playing politics with the Iraq deployment, which has been highly unpopular with the British public.

Mr. Cameron wasted no time on Sunday in responding to Mr. Brown’s decision. “He’s treating the British people as fools,” Mr. Cameron said on BBC television after Mr. Brown’s appearance. “Everybody knows he wanted to have an election, and he’s now saying, ‘I’m not having an election because I want to make my changes.’”

That was the kind of sharp talk that galvanized the Conservatives at their conference.

“I felt proud of the party in the way that everyone responded to the threat of an early election by pulling together and putting the best foot forward,” said Antonia Cox, an active Conservative Party worker who is seeking selection by the party as a parliamentary candidate.

The election threat from the Labor Party, Ms. Cox said, actually helped the Conservatives. “It prompted David Cameron to produce this fantastic speech that got everyone saying: ‘Wow.’ And now Brown looks like a spinner because of the troops and a chicken because he pulled out.”

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