So, after friggin' weeks of hot air, the election's off (if in fact it was ever on).

Today's widespread reports of "jubilant" Tories are absurd; Conservatives and LibDems both will be breathing huge sighs of relief this week, having been spared an election campaign they were neither prepared to fight nor likely to win.

Certainly Brown has made a tactical error in handing Cameron and Campbell a stick with which to beat him at the next PMQs, and no doubt that vein of criticism will continue until such time as actual events- not hypothetical ones- assert a greater pull on parliamentary life.

Conference promises are easily made, especially by opposition parties, and tend to be qualified, neutered or simply forgotten come the day that a manifesto must be written. But the rapturous frenzy that's greeted the concept of the £1 million inheritance tax threshold has shown us two things with crystal clarity: firstly, for all his attempts at ecumenicalism, "Dave" Cameron is coming to accept that his party is squarely, irretrievably middle class and middle England; and secondly, how very different that England is from the rest of the United Kingdom. On what proportion of Scottish lives would such a change have any effect?

Yet as the Labour vote melts away in their traditional heartlands, either drifting to Celtic nationalism or disappearing amid a fugue of apathy, one might argue the best, healthiest, most logical move is for the Conservatives to finally let the veil fall and openly champion the Home Counties England that has always been their bedrock. This would see them make significant gains and perhaps open the way to their retaking of the London parliament and, if combined with the Euro-scepticism and hard line on immigration those Home Counties voters prefer, rob the UKIP fruitcakes and even the BNP of their votes. Hard to imagine twenty years ago, but it's easy to see a near-future wherein the various peoples of a devolved British Isles have no use for the Labour Party, neither trusted in power not valued as an opposition. Many have opined that Brown is afraid of becoming this generation's Jim Callaghan. A second Winter of Discontent is unlikely on his watch, but another hallmark of the Callaghan years- Benn/Jenkins style dissent and radicalism within the party- would be welcome at this point. Wither a lefty "Gang of Four", an inverse SDP?

So much for speculation. There's been far too much punditry already, perhaps far more the root and fuel of the problem than any "constipated dithering" on Gordon Brown' part. The only consolation for the Prime Minister this week is that- having nixed an election for the foreseeable future- all poll results, good or bad, have been rendered utterly irrelevant.

Just a couple of observations about the recent transfer of power in Britain... Being a work-from-home type, I have the chance to watch a lot of these things "as they happen" on the rolling news channels.

I was struck by the stumbling, anticlimactic denoument to Blair's final PMQs: "... um, that's that, the end." Admittedly, it got a better reception than the similarly fudged finalé of his resignation announcment on May 10th (when the assembled faithful compleltely missed their cue for applause). Weird that this consumate showman should allow two of the most-scrutinised( and surely well-rehearsed) statements of his career just fizzle out. For all the apparent reluctance with which he's leaving centre stage (and the hubris/masochism with which he's embarced his new role) I think there's a palpable fatigue in evidence too.

And the whole session in the Commons was unbelievabley genial: whither the final kicking to his opponents? Why where Cameron (too much in awe?) and Campbell (just had his Horlicks?) so damn nice to him? Even Blair himself could barely mask his incredulity when he received a haliography from Ian feckin' Paisley! At least there where two flashes of the old days among the schmaltz: Blair's "Au Revoir, Auf Weidersen and Arrivederce" to blustering Euro-sceptic Nicholas Winterton; and his back-hander to bizarrely coifured Lib Dem weirdo Richard Younger-Ross' question about "church and state", yet another indicator of his party's apparent inability to offer any kind of opposition to anyone.

Similarly, I couldn't figure out what the point of Brown's allusion to his school motto later that day was meant to be about. Was the hulking "iron fist" (hey, two Marvel superheroes!) trying to look vulnerable? The reference to/reminder of Kirkcaldy won't have played well to the anti-Scottish quarter. And as far as inspirational rhetoric goes, "I will try my utmost" (in other words, I promise nothing) isn't exactly "I have a dream". If anything he ended up looking like an over-earnest, over-grown Boy Scout, squirming before the lenses of the media: "Akela, I Will Do My Best". If he reminded me of anyone at all, it was John Major.

Brown's more colourful than grey, but only just.