Shortly after he became Prime Minister, Gordon Brown made a terrible mistake which resulted in one of the most delicious and unintentionally amusing episodes in recent British history. The events surrounding Brown's "election that never was" also provided a valuable insight into the personality of David Cameron, the most infuriating of Tory leaders. It served to illustrate that the Tory leader is a gifted individual, someone with a strong survival instinct in a crisis, who has a maddening habit of relaxing after a comeback and then squandering his advantages.
Back in August and September 2007, Cameron came perilously close to destruction and showed what he is capable of in terms political management. The then newly installed Brown was riding high in the polls and being presented by newspapers usually unsympathetic to the Labour cause as a father of the nation whose supposed wisdom, experience and all-round reliability made him, it was claimed, a splendid contrast with his predecessor Tony Blair. During an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the countryside and the floods that hit Britain that summer, Brown floated on a tide of the media's goodwill and public approval. So excited did his advisers become that they urged Brown to capitalise by calling an early general election to smash the opposition leader David Cameron and the Conservatives. Journalists were briefed by Labour that an election would take place that autumn. Momentum built, with the press reports fuelling confidence in the Brown circle, leading to further boastful briefings, more reports and a spiral of hubris.

Brown himself was unsure whether or not he wanted an early election. Having waited ten years to inherit the premiership from Blair, he had no desire to risk losing it a few months later. However, he was ahead in the polls and enjoying Tory discomfort. Winning a contest would earn him his own mandate and simultaneously crush the young Tory opposition leader. Unwisely, rather than announcing early, an uncertain Brown then allowed the speculation to run during his own party's conference in Bournemouth and the Tory conference held the following week in Blackpool.

Indecision was to prove disastrous for Brown. Cameron — fearing defeat — had for weeks been orchestrating a fightback to avert an election. At the Tory conference the party faithful were duly rallied by speeches made by the then shadow Chancellor George Osborne, offering to dramatically reduce inheritance tax, and by Cameron himself taking the fight to Brown in impressive terms. The voters noticed, as was reflected when the polls crossed that week giving the Tories a lead. Brown, his bubble burst, had to announce that he would not after all be calling an election. Result: public humiliation.

What Brown and his acolytes had failed to factor in to their calculations was David Cameron. That summer they dismissed him as a boy sent to do a man's job and in their excitement made an elementary error, forgetting that their ruthless opponent might not respond in the manner they anticipated.

Brown's team was so sold on the idea that Cameron was a southern softie, a metropolitan liberal Tory lightweight and public relations puffball, that in their mania they failed to spot that he tends to do well in a serious crisis. Cameron is good at handling pressure; only a fool writes him off.

And yet, having fought his way back to contention Cameron then made a hash of the election campaign against the discredited Brown when it eventually came in 2010. In failing to articulate a clear sense of mission, or even to enunciate properly the party's policies, Cameron baffled many of his own supporters and failed to win the election outright. It was as though he desired office without having a clear enough sense of what he wanted to do with power. He snuck in at the head of a coalition.