John Curtice: Former PM may not be right man to back Brown

ONE of the fears that stalks Labour's election campaign is that voters will decide they cannot stomach the idea of another five years of Gordon Brown.

He has been a deeply unpopular Prime Minister who has widely been accused of dithering and is hardly a natural communicator. The charismatic, smooth-talking David Cameron might seem the better bet.

But there is a counterbalancing hope. Mr Brown is the Prime Minister who, in his own misspoken words, "saved the world" during the financial crisis. He took the decisive action needed to stabilise the banking system and pursued the measures needed to ensure the economy did not subsequently nosedive.

Indeed, there are signs that Labour's credibility on the economy – and thus its standing in the polls – has improved following the end of the recession.

Labour's task in the next few weeks is to promote the latter image of Mr Brown. And who could be a better advocate on Mr Brown's behalf than his predecessor, Tony Blair? After all, Mr Blair has been dubbed the "great communicator" and nobody ever accused him of being a ditherer. Rather, he is the leader who once told his party that it was at its best when it was at its boldest. As head of the New Labour project, he fundamentally changed his party, often in the teeth of significant opposition.

So if Mr Blair pops up and praises Mr Brown for his bold leadership and his ability to lead his country in the right direction in the face of a changing world, surely we are bound to listen?

However, highly popular though Mr Blair once was, the shine had long since come off by the time he left office in the summer of 2007. Even at the time of his much vaunted third electoral victory in a row in 2005, only 34 per cent were satisfied with his leadership according to MORI while 59 per cent were dissatisfied. With Iraq hanging around his neck, he did not recover thereafter.

Mr Blair's rating five years ago is almost exactly identical to Mr Brown's now – 34 per cent are satisfied, 60 per cent are dissatisfied. If Labour fear that Mr Brown is indeed a potential liability, it is far from clear that Mr Blair is the right man to persuade the public otherwise.

• John Curtice is Professor of Politics, Strathclyde University