If Brown loses in Britain we will feel a number of ripple effects here

AND so they’re off. The people of Britain, as long expected, are taking a trip to the polls on May 6.

Gordon Brown, like Brian Cowen, a prime minister after not so much as an election within the ruling party, could not postpone his day of reckoning with the voters any longer.

No previous post-war British prime minister with a working majority has gone into an election so far behind the main opposition — if some of the opinion polls are to be believed.