I was surprised by this too. The Glenrothes byelection takes place a fortnight today and, reading around for an update of what's going on, I found this claim buried in a BBC website report from last week.
The BBC has learned that Gordon Brown has been told that Labour will win the Glenrothes byelection.
The BBC understands that campaign strategists - who just three weeks ago were warning the prime minister that Labour would lose - have now told him that the tide has turned in the constituency, partly the result of Mr Brown's handling of the banking crisis.
The Scottish Labour party told me today that, although the party thinks it's making progress, the idea that Brown has been told victory is in the bag is "utterly not correct". An official said:
People are getting carried away. We feel we are doing better than we were and we think we have caught up significantly but we still think the SNP are ahead.
That's what the pollsters think too, as Mike Smithson reports at PoliticalBetting today.
Given the state of expectations a few weeks ago, a Labour victory would be seen as a remarkable achievement for Brown. Smithson floats the more interesting theory that, if Labour were to lose, it would not be as damaging as we all assumed it would be before the banking crisis.
The media has decided that the current big political story is of the dramatic comeback of "the man who saved the world financial system" and nothing - not even polls or byelection defeats - are going to change that perception.
So a Labour hold in this seat will be proclaimed as confirming the media narrative - a Labour defeat for the large part will be dismissed as not being very important.
Is he right? I'm not sure. I can't imagine anyone in the media, or the Labour party, describing losing Glenrothes as being "not very important", but, with no one in the party challenging Brown's leadership at the moment, a defeat would not have the consequences that it would have done in other circumstances. In that sense, I think Smithson's right.
