Mr Brown faces his big decision

Even Gordon Brown's most fervent supporters could hardly have dreamed of the mood at the Labour Party conference today, as he makes his first speech there as Prime Minister. He faces no serious critics within his party. He is riding high in the polls: the latest gives Labour an eight-point lead. He has weathered a series of crises with his reputation enhanced. And Tony Blair, once so indispensable, now seems a distant memory. Yet Mr Brown now faces the toughest decision of his career: whether to call a early general election. That is the dilemma that dominates discussion in Bournemouth.

In favour of a early poll, he can argue that he has proved himself and now deserves a mandate of his own winning. It would give him a full term to press ahead with reforms to achieve his own vision for Britain. It would also avoid any nasty economic fallout from this summer's credit crunch, which might well be felt by voters by next spring. And victory now could snooker an ill-prepared Conservative Party: if they lost, the Tory Right would almost certainly rise in revenge against David Cameron, plunging the party into a new era of internecine conflict.

Yet an October election is also supremely risky. Labour's majority of more than 69 is respectable and workable. Mr Brown could achieve a lot in another two years. Meanwhile, Labour's local organisation is buoyed more by relief at getting rid of Mr Blair than by real groundwork. The party's finances are in a mess following the cash-for-honours scandal. And the British electorate has a record for punishing those politicians seen to be arrogant in playing with conventional election timing: Edward Heath never recovered after throwing away an early election in 1974.

Mr Brown is unlikely to give any hints today. But he does need to set out more firmly his vision for a different kind of Labour future. He has proved how different he is in style from Mr Blair, but he has yet to set out a clear alternative path of reform - on schools, the NHS, criminal justice and international involvements. That is something that we now need to see more clearly, whether it soon forms the basis of an election manifesto - or whether it is simply a roadmap for the rest of his premiership.