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"He'll be gone in three weeks"

Andrew Neil | 09:24 UK time, Thursday, 18 September 2008

The Lib Dems have departed Bournemouth and Labour is preparing to head for Manchester, where it will gather in circumstances as bad as a Labour government has seen since the IMF baled out the Wilson/Callaghan one in 1976.

The Tories are at record highs in the polls (52% in the one out this morning) and the FTSE share index is at a recent record low - the speculation about Gordon Brown's chances of surviving is far from receding; it has now reached a new fever pitch.

One seasoned Labour sympathiser told me last night: "He'll be gone in three weeks". I've always taken the view that decapitation is simply not in Labour's DNA - but we're living through unprecedented events, and now I'm not so sure.

That's the dramatic backdrop to this morning's show and, now that the turmoil has reached Britain's high streets, with the Lloyds takeover of ailing HBOS, we'll be asking a simple but rather important question: is your money safe with any bank these days?

We'll have the latest from the markets and we'll be exploring whether the Blair/Brown government is saviour or culprit in this financial crisis, with former Paymaster General and Brown confidant Geoffrey Robinson and Conservative John Redwood.

Will the financial crisis take the heat off the Prime Minister? Some argue that after 10 years at the helm of the Treasury, there is nobody better placed to see us through.

Others claim that he has presided over a massive expansion of private and public debt, which is why Britain is uniquely vulnerable in the current meltdown.

With the latest Ipsos Mori poll suggesting the Tories are on 52 points for the first time since Thatcher's heyday, we'll get the reaction of former Education Secretary Estelle Morris.

Finally, the first in our series on Post-War Presidents explores the legacy of Bill Clinton.

You get your chance to later today.

Let me know what you think in the comments box below.

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