Last night’s meeting of Islington Full Council to set the Council Tax for the next year sounds like it was quite a lively affair.

At first appearance, the Labour group seem to have been the winners. They managed to overturn the wafer-slender numerical superiority of the controlling Lib Dems (the position is currently 23 Lib Dem, 23 Labour, one independent former Lib Dem, and one Green) to get their budget proposals agreed in place of the official one proposed by the (Lib Dem) Council Executive. Such a victory has been on the cards ever since the 2006 local election results returned a tiny majority for the Lib Dems (figures as above but before the former Lib Dem became a former one). But nevertheless this is something of a cause for celebration for them. At least when I was attending Council meetings, Labour managed to get all 23 of their 23 councillors to turn up to every Full Council meeting. This is no mean Whipping achievement, what with councillors’ other commitments in life and when time after time they miss other (surely more enticing) engagements to turn up at the Town Hall, only to lose every vote, time after time. But - at least at one level - it came good for them last night and for the first time since 2006 (and indeed since 1999) won a major vote in the Council chamber.

But I can’t help feeling that some of their more thinking Councillors might have wondered - privately - this morning, where that has left them in the longer term. Fun and games in the Council chamber may keep people like them and on occasion, yes, I admit it, me, entertained and amused. But to most people it is not even tomorrow’s chip paper - it is simply not interesting at all - just something that happens on another planet.

But what non-political obsessives do most certainly care about is how much of the money they get every week or every month they have to hand over to the government or the Council. And what last night did establish for residents here is that Islington Labour have put your Council tax up. For many people this is one of the very very few things that the Council does that they notice - which makes it all the more unfortunate (if you are Labour) that this is the only action on the Council that they have got successfully implemented for almost ten years.

Was this really the strategic move that Islington Labour wanted to make? Because this is an issue with some considerable history: Labour have spent years now trying to overturn their reputation for being high taxers here in Islington.

When Labour last ran the Council, in the late 1990s, Islington had the highest Council Tax in the capital. The then opposition Lib Dems made considerable political success out of this, and Labour charging you too much Council Tax was (along providing very poor services, and a range of other things) one of the major weapons they were able to use almost to win control at the 1998 elections (the result was 26-26) and then actually to do so in a byelection the following year.

To reinforce that political gulf, the by-now-ruling Lib Dems then cut the Council Tax for three years running (in 2000, 2001 and 2002). And since 2002 they have pledged to keep it below the London average which they have done. More recently the Labour group have even copied this latter pledge and this seemed to take the level of Council Tax out of the Islington political arena as a major issue. Labour have made much of saying that they have changed and are different now to the late 90s - and specifically that they are more financially responsible.

All of which makes it all the more striking that Labour have now taken this dramatic step which stains their hands afresh with the association with high Council Tax here.

I’m sure this wasn’t what they had planned - and indeed a party doesn’t just put up Council Tax for the sake of it: it does it in order to pay for some additional services. In this case Labour put forward this position in order to introduce free school meals - and also a Council Tax discount for pensioners: you can read the details on their website. They presumably think this is in itself the right thing to do; the Lib Dem group disagree and have a set of reasons why they think it is not the best use of taxpayers’ money. This may be the right or wrong thing to do, in itself.

And also considered more narrowly as a political calculation, free school meals would presumably normally be a popular thing to do - as most promises to spend more money on something are (especially when they involve children!). And Labour are understandably very pleased to have got their proposal through and I wouldn’t expect them to say anything that detracts from that publicly.

But I can’t help wondering if - privately - some of them don’t wonder if getting through these one or two spending commitments in specific areas were worth it to sacrifice their many years trying to distance themselves from exactly this kind of political positioning, as tax and spenders. They won the vote last night but the real prize - what they are surely really after and which will really allow them to have an impact on Islington - is winning control of the Council in next year’s elections. Some of them will be aware today that associating themselves with high taxing has cost them dear in the past at the ballot box, and is surely unlikely to help them in these recession-hit times.

Is free school meals for children worth more votes than continuing your efforts of the last few years to distance yourself from high taxing? Make your own judgement.

Personally, I can see that it will be popular with those who benefit directly: those parents whose children do not already receive free school meals. But I don’t think its positive impact will be felt much beyond that group. Increasing Council Tax will be felt by much more people directly - and perhaps even more importantly it is seen by almost all as emblematic of a party’s general approach. The recession and the generally very low level of Council Tax rises this year, especially in London, will also affect the way it plays politically - as will the campaign that the local Lib Dems have been running over the last few weeks for a Council Tax freeze, deftly re-associating themselves with their traditional low Council Tax position.

“Islington Labour means high Council Tax” was a successful political weapon for their opponents ten years ago, and one that last night the Labour group took down off a shelf, dusted down and put back in their hands again.

There’s a rare degree of consensus about at the moment on where Britain’s political situation has got to, so I thought I would treat readers to my take on the current situation.

Firstly, I don’t buy this overall story that it’s now inevitable that Gordon Brown is finished. The parallel most in my mind has been John Major’s position in the spring of 1994. Then, as now, it was the accepted wisdom among political commentators that the Prime Minister would be ousted in a matter of weeks, and that inevitably, Ken Clarke (in 1994) would replace him in Downing Street. That was no less accepted fact then than Brown’s demise is now - indeed more so, I would say. But in fact what happened was that there was no moment of resolution in 1994, the immediate crisis passed and when, a year later, John Major did cause a leadership election, it was on his own terms and no serious rival came forward to challenge him. And indeed we should not forget the parallel of that leadership election either - this current Prime Minister has an established record of ensuring he is the only candidate in a party leadership election - something which, incidentally, you would think to listen to some people now was an accident. It was of course no such thing, but the direct result of Gordon Brown spending many years carefully wooing MPs and other key figures to ensure exactly that happened when Blair finally went.

And while it’s obviously not something that you can count on, we shouldn’t forget either the potential impact of sudden and shocking events. In the days after September 11 2001 all sorts of things that had hitherto seemed immovably set in stone changed in a matter of days. If some dramatic attack on Britain or elsewhere - and it need not necessarily be on the scale of 9/11, or the July 7th 2005 London bombings - were to happen, it’s not at all difficult to imagine events working out in such a way that people would turn back to Gordon Brown as a solid and figure, highly experienced in government and, as his defenders say, the best person to steer Britain through coming choppy waters.

In such circumstances, would people trust Gordon Brown or David Cameron more? Maybe the public perception of Cameron has moved on so much now that they would prefer him. But for my money I’d still say that people would hold on to nurse, for fear of something worse. Cameron’s ratings are still far more driven by comparative perceptions of Brown, than they are by perceptions of Cameron, and an emergency - depending hugely, of course, on what it was as well as how it was handled - would change that dynamic quite powerfully.

And indeed the little evidence we have of Brown’s handling of such circumstances, from the terrorist disturbances that took place in the few days after he took power, is that he handled them well (even though the whole episode always reminded, me for some reason, of the scene where the Minister of Magic first appears to the Prime Minister in Harry Potter, to explain various odd goings-on around the country).

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Fall is well and truly upon us, and yesterday afternoon we took a beautiful autumnal walk around Highgate Cemetery.

It is very much a creation of the nineteenth century - one of several cemeteries built following the need for more burial space during the rapid expansion of London, and before the twentieth century vogue of cremation. And it feels very Victorian gothic, containing graves or other tombs which are at the least very grand and proper, normally topped by at least an angel or some other statue, and in many cases magnificently more: several large family mausoleums, as well as areas of catacombs. Most famously there is the ‘Lebanon Circle’ - a circular area of catacombs around a large central Cedar (of Lebanon); and an Eqyptian avenue reflecting the fashion of interest in Egypt at one point in the Victorian era.

The very leafy surroundings make it particularly evocative to be there in the autumn, and we had a beautiful fresh afternoon to be up there.

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Right, so I should have kept my nerve, obviously, in saying he’d never actually do it.

But this must surely mark the end of people’s trust for Gordon, big time. The latest turn of events just makes it even more plain that he’s been playing games with us all - and once he’s been revealed as the casino gambler, he’s going to find it very difficult to go back in our minds to being the dour Scottish bank manager again.

Throughout I’ve been convinced that Mr Brown is working to a plan, but I confess that if today’s developments are part of one, then I for one can’t work out what it is.

One thing the delay does do is to give Cameron another chance - see my post earlier - but even with the new circumstances, I still think he’s going to find it very difficult to take advantage of it.

Throughout all this speculation about a possible General Election, I have argued that it is just Mr Brown winding everyone up, and he is not really planning to have an election this year. I set out the case for this here, and certainly he does really seem to have used the threat to tie Mr Cameron in knots over the summer.

However I have to admit that I have been wavering over the last few days. Several of the speeches in Bournemouth this week seem to have been very much geared up to trying to win votes in the near future. And there comes a point in the development of speculation about an election - speculation which is after all generated entirely by his own people - when it looks like either or both (a) weakness and/or (b) that you are just playing games with the electorate, not to call it. I should think that we are coming up on that point pretty imminently now - indeed already if he were to announce that it was all off, he would surely face some slightly awkward questions about why he had been ramping it all up so much and winding up the public when he had no intention of bringing it to a climax. The balloon has not yet gone up but it will need a bit of effort to haul it down and secure it again. It looks like pretty blatant political manipulation and I have argued before that his fondness for this is, sooner or later, going to p*** people off.

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Could somebody explain to me how it is Gordon Brown is currently asking us to accept the following three propositions simultaneously?

1. He has licensed his ‘aides’ to spend almost the whole summer putting it about that he is considering calling an autumn election (and as I have argued, this strategy has delivered for him in spades, in stitching up Cameron). The fact that an early election on the agenda at all is entirely down to him - and every time speculation has looked like tailing off, his team has stoked it up again.

2. Gordon Brown is a serious man with serious ideas, strongly focussed on “getting on with the job” of running the country, facing down terrorist threats, and not to be distracted from that by piffling petty party-political considerations such as what the most advantageous moment for an election might be.

3. Gordon Brown is a new ‘non-spinning’ leader, representing a change from the age of New Labour obsession with managing the media, as happened under Blair.

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I see Mr Brown has given a memo from Philip Gould to the Mirror, and told them it could mean an autumn election (BBC article)

Do we think this is consistent with:

(a) Mr Brown actually planning to hold an election this autumn,

or

(b) Mr Brown wanting to everyone thinking that he’s planning an autumn election, to create confusion and general havoc in other parties’ election planning, and further damage Cameron while he’s vulnerable?

The answer seems pretty clear to me.

I must say I have always been pretty sceptical about the idea. This was confirmed last night when someone told me that he had it (only second or possibly third hand) from someone who was there, that last week’s ‘political’ cabinet meeting at Chequers was entirely focussed on an autumn general election.

In my experience when you think you’ve found out something that you’re not meant to, then generally you were meant to.

(By the way it’s been a long time since I read the Mirror and the stuff they write really is drivel, even apart from fact that their precious memo doesn’t even really say what they claim it does.)

Greg Dyke gave an interesting speech to a meeting organised by CentreForum yesterday. I suspect a good number of those present had come because they thought he might be about to announce his candidacy for the London Mayoralty. But he didn’t say anything about that, and just stuck to the advertised title about how Britain’s democracy will fare under Prime Minister Brown.

A lot of what he said was not new. His theme was the public’s disengagement from the political process, and he was particularly critical of the unfairness of Britain’s electoral system, and how that contributed to the fact that so few people voted. He reminded us that 55% of those who voted at the last General Election voted against Labour, but they won with a clear majority anyway, and that taking into account the low turnout figure, in fact only 21% of voters actually voted for Labour.

But he clearly believed it passionately and it was interesting to hear him say how strongly he is committed to proportional representation.

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