Normal Service Resumes

Today’s Guardian/ ICM monthly poll shows Gordon Brown’s honeymoon is well and truly over.

Labour are on 31%, down four points, and back at the level they were in the fag-end days of the Blair premiership.

Confusingly though, the Tories have also slipped back, dropping 3 points to 37%, while the leader-less Lib Dems went up three (go figure).

Of course, no-one should be surprised at this state of affairs given the recent wave of calamities – some avoidable, some not.

From here on in, though, the test will be whether a generation of corn-fed Labour backbenchers who are used to having it easy now have the discipline and loyalty to knuckle down and get behind Brown for the long haul.

Some of those in marginal seats are even going to have to start working for a living, taking seriously their Conservative and Liberal challengers.

And with a moribund party apparatus, unable to help them as in days of yore, they really are the architects of their own fortunes.

But the troops should not be too disheartened with this bout of “mid term blues”. Just have to make a readjustment that the days of plenty are over and electoral normal service has resumed.