AHC: Labour reelected in 2010

Your challenge, would you choose to accept it, is to make Labour Party the winner of the UK general election, 2010 with a POD no earlier than May 1, 2007. The election must be held on the same day as in OTL. It is not necessarily a majority government, though Labour must still be in power as of ATL today. no other restrictions.

Bonus if Gordon Brown remains Prime Minister today. Double bonus if the UKIP wins seats.
 
Simply do away with the televised debates. In RL, the narrative of the final three weeks of the campaign was mostly focused on whether the Lib Dems could finally make a major breakthrough. Without the debates, Brown and Labour could have got their message across far more effectively, and could well have won a plurality of seats. Oh, and "Bigotgate" didn't seem to have much of an effect on the polls in RL, so we can probably keep that in.
 
'Bigotgate' may have pissed off those across the spectrum against immigration, but it roused the left who feel that many of the anti-immigration crowd are just bigoted, and finally Gordon Brown admits it.
 
Simply do away with the televised debates. In RL, the narrative of the final three weeks of the campaign was mostly focused on whether the Lib Dems could finally make a major breakthrough. Without the debates, Brown and Labour could have got their message across far more effectively, and could well have won a plurality of seats. Oh, and "Bigotgate" didn't seem to have much of an effect on the polls in RL, so we can probably keep that in.

Not sure about that. If anything, the debates meant that the Lib Dems could take away from the Conservatives that vague and floppy mantra of "change", and thus avoid the fate of being squeezed by the two bigger parties. In a world without debates, I'm quite willing to acknowledge Labour may do a point or two better than IOTL- but I'd think the Conservatives will do three or four points better. You might get, say, a 40/32/19 election, which still means a Conservative majority, unless I'm much mistaken.

Labour winning in 2010 is very difficult. Since the financial crisis began, how many governments and presidents in the Western world have been re-elected at all?
 
Labour winning in 2010 is very difficult. Since the financial crisis began, how many governments and presidents in the Western world have been re-elected at all?

Reinfeldt in Sweden, Harper in Canada, and Merkel in Germany, off the top of my head. A quick look at Wikipedia reveals that number also includes Stoltenberg in Norway, Ansip in Estonia, and Tusk in Poland, likely among others.
 
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