Poll triggers election fever: it must be May 2010

There won't be an early election in 2009 for all the usual reasons, the most important being that Gordon Brown would lose it. Today's Guardian/ICM poll shows that the Tory lead over Labour and the Lib Dems has shrunk from 45-30-18 to 38-33-19 in the past recession-dominated month.

That won't stop election speculation in Fleet Street and Westminster. It's always harmless fun and easier to talk about than the pensions deficit or bank liquidity.

Besides, as one Tory strategist reminded me at David Cameron's Christmas drinks for the hacks: "We have to operate on the basis that Brown will call one any day." Although my friend's private hunch is that he won't.

I agree. It wouldn't be the right thing to do in the middle of such a storm as this and it wouldn't be the smart thing to do either. And, as scholarly Martin Kettle points out elsewhere in this neighbourhood, prime ministers who have called February elections have rarely prospered.

Martin could have added Asquith to his list. During the crisis with the Lords over Lloyd George's radical 1909 budget, Asquith called a January election in 1910 which resulted in his losing his majority in a hung parliament where he became a prisoner of the Irish nationalist vote. When he tried again that December he got a similar result.

Cabinet ministers I trust say that the best Brown would have got before he backed down last October was a reduced majority. Given the trouble he already has with his backbenches – more is promised today over part-privatisation of the Post Office – that would have hamstrung him to no great compensatory benefit. "In office, not in power," as Norman Lamont bitchily remarked of John Major. That's the best Brown could hope for in 2009.

The ICM poll is interesting in that the government's standing has risen as the economic crisis deepens while the Tories – who can only talk and not act – have slipped back. Cameron still leads Brown as the man with most PM potential, though Brown wins on most counts – including (a new one this) honesty. But most of that is not really surprising. Brown has been reinvigorated. As Clare Short says: "He's got his dignity back."

As for the Tories, David Cameron has gambled (with German and European Central Bank blessing) that the government's proactive measures will be seen to have failed in a year's time and his own caution against excessive debt will be vindicated. "I told you so."

Well, it's a punt, though the reality is likely to be messier. For instance, the German government, and the cautious ECB too, is likely to follow the dramatic US lead in reflating – interest rates there are close to zero now. They will have to respond to events in the same wobbly fashion, and Cameron and George Osborne will have to respond in turn. It's time for plan B and plans C to Z now.

I still don't think Brown's and Alistair Darling's experience will trump the "time for a change" mood unless Labour does exceptionally well or the Tories do something really stupid or unsavoury. But it's always possible.

Rightwing economists are still trying to put all the blame for the crisis on governments – "Why didn't they stop us being stupid?" – and today's Daily Mail carries a column by AN Wilson, a clever, silly man, entitled "Why is the state so utterly incompetent?"

In a crisis like this one, the state, for all its failings, remains the player of last resort. And unlike Wall Street's Bernard Madoff, it won't steal $50bn of other people's money – though the libertarians will glibly tell us they do that every month.

Brown's slim hope for April or May 2010 is that voters will see the state as an important part of the solution, not the problem as Cameroon "small state" rhetoric still suggests much of the time.

But on balance my hunch remains that, whether the economy is recovering or not, come the day voters will decide it's time for a change. In which case Labour's task is to govern with as much competence and dignity as it can muster in the storm, knowing that it will make a return to government in due course that much easier.

After all, it may not be a great election to win.