There are a lot of mighty relieved politicos around right now.

Whatever they might say and whatever they might have said before, next to none of them really wanted an election.

For Members of Parliament in safe seats elections are necessary chores. Those in safeish seats regard polling day as a necessary evil. However MPs in marginal seats would mostly prefer democracy didn’t actually apply to them. An MP with a majority of less than 3,000 who claimed to relish the idea of an early election without the hint of a blush would be bare faced indeed!

I’ve little doubt that neither of Reading’s MPs would want to fight an election so soon after the last. But Big Martin and Little Robert are smart spin doctors, so you won’t find them admitting it. As for their hard-pressed party volunteers, I suspect I can count those activists in Reading who had relished the idea of a poll in the dark dank days of November without taking my shoes off. Now they can stop pretending.

No such luck for their leaders. The charade must go on. Does Mr Brown really expect us to believe that he didn’t take any notice of the opinion polls in making his decision not to go to the country early? Not a factor? Not even the tiniest bit? And can Mr Cameron honestly expect us to believe that he really wanted an election when his strategists had been openly briefing only a couple of weeks back that the objective of the Tory Conference was to stop that election being called? Was it not Malcolm Rifkind, the former Conservative Foreign Secretary, who only ten days ago described the idea of an autumn election as a “constitutional outrage”?

Do they really think the electorate is such a bunch of teacakes that they will believe this disingenuous twaddle?

The Liberals, who as the third party have the luxury of saying absolutely anything without the danger of it actually being tested in Government, always claim to want elections (so long as they are by-elections). However, I strongly suspect that there are very few of our jumper wearing friends who wouldn’t rather see Ming the Merciless shuffle off onto the Back Bench for the Bewildered before the PM fires the starting gun.

It is all spin of one sort or another. Spin is what politicians do. It’s nothing new, nothing invented by any one party – it is just what they do. Criticising a politician for spinning is like criticising Lewis Hamilton for speeding!

Whatever the reasons, Mr Brown reached the right conclusion. I agree with Malcolm Rifkind – and Tony Benn for that matter. It IS a constitutional outrage that in 2007 the power to call an election remains the sole prerogative of the Prime Minister (for we all know the Monarch won’t refuse a dissolution). It is both an anachronism in a modern democracy and a built in advantage to Government over opposition to be able freely to choose the election date. It is high time this nonsense was modernised and the term of our Parliament either fixed or placed within reasonable parameters – say between four and five years following the last election, so long as the Government can win a vote of confidence in the House of Commons.

When it comes to the crunch the voters rarely consider political embarrassment more important than their economic fortunes. So when 2009 comes around the last few weeks may well be a distant memory. But while Mr Brown will licks his wounds he should decide to save himself and future Prime Ministers the dilemma of pondering the election date by giving away that most partisan and least defensible prerogative.