Talking this week to what the media sometimes calls "a No 10 insider" about an unrelated policy matter, I heard my contact dismiss renewed speculation among Labour MPs about a 2009 general election – which had been pumped up by one poll that cut the Tory lead to a mere 3%.
In fact, some of Gordon Brown's chums may be telling him not to allow loose talk to permit even a sniff of a repeat of last year's on-off election drama. He should take an opportunity soon – this weekend? – to rule it out, they say.
Good. Let's get real here. It was the silliest talk I have heard since learning that President-elect Obama is serious about considering his erstwhile opponent, Hilary Clinton, for the post of US secretary of state.
Don't do it, Mr President-elect. The Clintons are too much associated with a past that American voters – and the wider world – want to put behind them. And, as the old saying goes, never hire anyone you can't fire.
Don't do it, Mr Prime Minister, would also be good advice. Except my contact assures me it won't be needed in his case. Brown has been given a reprieve by the economic crisis and the pro-active way he and Chancellor Darling are trying to tackle it.
But it's only that. They will have to do well in mitigating the effects of the global slowdown – and Brown's own contribution to the way it develops in Britain (short or deep?) – and in steering the country towards recovery before they can have any slim hope of winning a fourth term.
The short-term prospects look bleak in both public and private sectors. David Cameron may have miscalculated his own fiscal strategy, as Patrick Wintour reports today. But Darling's challenge in Monday's pre-budget report (PBR) is scary too (as he also reports), and the FT's front page today talks of "runaway borrowing" before all this is over.
I think they know that. Brown's unforced error in allowing general election speculation to build up over the summer of 2007 and then pretending he hadn't called it off because the polls went wobbly on him came close to being fatal for his premiership.
At the time I never thought Brown would actually do it. "Vote in November, during an economic crisis and when you have two and a half years to run: where's the national interest in that?" suspicious voters would have asked. They did when Ted Heath called his "who governs Britain?" election in 1974: they threw him out.
Yet someone who might know told me only recently that Brown changed his mind at lunchtime on the fateful Saturday – just hours before announcing his no-poll decision.
Entering 2009, Labour simply isn't ready: it doesn't have the money or organisation, and knows that a misplaced sense of confidence would be foolish and wrong when every effort must be focused on the economy.
Party strategists know that the Cameroons, politically battered though they are at present, have both money and organisation. There is a lot of below-the-radar cash and effort being pumped into key marginals, a targeted Labour MP was explaining last week.
He remains hopeful that the other side's cynically tokenist choice of candidate will come unstuck on his patch, another micro-reason for soldiering on to April or May 2010. Hope springs eternal in politics.
June 3 is the last legal date within five years of the opening of the 2005 parliament. It's rare to go that long – or late – and European elections scheduled for June 4 2009 may tempt some siren voices. It would be a rash punter who bets good money on where we will all be by June 2009, let alone June 2010.
Not that it will stop them. Who knows, the bookies may be regarded as a safe haven by then.
