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On the day before the 1992 general election, the bookmakers at Ascot were offering odds of 6-1 against John Major's Conservatives winning. I was with the economist Roger Bootle, and we agreed that Labour, well ahead in the polls, was bound to win. It was pointless betting on the Tories, even at those odds. When the results came in we kickedourselves.

When I told Lord Kinnock, the Labour leader at the time, this story years later, he jokingly said I should have telephoned him from Ascot. He said that on driving back from canvassing in south Wales the previous week he and his wife, Glenys, had had an uneasy feeling that, notwithstanding the polls, the election was slipping away" from them.