This fresh bout of gloom might actually do Gordon good

Mike Smithson on Political Betting brings us more poll gloom for Labour. This time it's from MORI, showing a large swing to the Tories - of 10% - from its last poll. The trend is in keeping with the YouGov poll in the Sunday Times and the ComRes poll for the Sindie.

Sad to say, but could Tory commentators like Fraser Nelson or Danny Finkelstein be right, that 2009 will see Tories regain their consistently big poll leads? Was Brown's recovery in late 2008, to within touching distance of Cameron, just a blip?

Nelson's and others' line goes like this: the recession will start to bite, and incumbents do badly when this happens, as a rule. This will prompt voters to remember why they disliked Brown quite so much just a few months ago. They think that Brown's 'window of opportunity', between the bank rescue and a wider recession, is closing fast.

But what happened to the argument doing the rounds last month, seemingly borne out by the polls, that Brown would lose for a different reason: the 'Churchill' factor? Voters thought Brown was the best man for the crisis, Cameron the best man for after the crisis. But are the figures so bad that an upswing by May 2010 are out of the question?

Nils Blythe - the nerd's Robert Peston - said on PM today that post-war recessions usually lasted about two years. This one started around the middle of last year, so a May 2010 election could conceivably come at the beginning of an upswing. Though that might make any difference to Brown's electoral prospects.

But the truth is - no-one really knows. This isn't like previous recessions, and the action taken by the Government to bailout out the banks (twice) is has never really been tried before. Will Hutton managed to sound apocalyptic in the Observer yesterday but optimistic on the World at One today. Perhaps that's because Brown's plan contained the essential elements he proposed for underwriting or buying the banks' toxic assets.

Today's plan might even work in finally freeing up lending and getting the economy moving again. If it does, perhaps Brown can still prosper. The narrative would be this: unprecedented times demanded unprecedented measures. This was not just your average Tory-style recession, but the gravest crisis since the 1930s. And Gordon rescued us.

Fanciful?