The unravelling of the United Bermuda Party has prompted speculation that Premier Dr. Ewart Brown will call a snap election.

The reasons are obvious:

¦ The likelihood that the UBP and its breakaway wing would run against each other in seats now held by the UBP would split the Opposition vote, and several more seats, including some thought to be strongholds, would fall into the Progressive Labour Party's hands.

¦ Calling an election now, with little likelihood of defeat, would extend the PLP in power until 2014, instead of 2012.

¦ Calling an election now would pull the PLP itself together with its own dissident wing forced to buckle under and fight the good fight.

¦ Calling an election now would enable the Premier, with the assistance of the central committee which supports him, to get rid of some of the dissidents and replace them with Brown loyalists.

Those are the advantages, and on the face of it, as with Sir John Swan in 1985, there would seem to be no reason not to go. Politics, as the late Dame Lois Browne-Evans said, is not kindergarten. But there is another way of looking at it. After the disastrous PLP split in 1984, Sir John called an election and won with 31 of the then 40 seats.

The PLP was forced back into its remaining strongholds with just seven seats, while the nascent National Liberal Party lost two seats but held on to two. Many would have written off the PLP then, but 13 years later, it was in Government. As Cordell Riley writes in today's Letters to the Editor, bitterness over that attempt to destroy the PLP bound that party together in a way little else could have.

And it can also be argued that the seeds of the UBP's destruction were seen then. As is often the case with big majorities, party discipline weakened at the same time that a certain arrogance emerged. Of course, straight lines cannot be drawn from the PLP's near-destruction in 1985 victory to its 1998 victory or from the UBP landslide to its current travails. But the lesson is clear. Massive parliamentary majorities aren't all they are cracked up to be, and the party that seeks to take advantage of another's weakness can look not strong, but bullying and cruel.

The public too, generally seems to wish for a balanced political scene in which an effective Government is balanced by a strong opposition which can hold it in check. Using an election to force out internal opponents is also dangerous. The idea that a party's leadership brooks no dissent is unhealthy and ultimately unpopular.

Dr. Brown would have a further problem if he did call an election in that he would be held to account for some of the unpopular decisions over the last year, and even if the Opposition is weak, that does not necessarily make the Government stronger. As importantly, Dr. Brown has promised to leave office in a little over 12 months. Why would he want to go into an election now, when the Government will be led by someone else in a year, someone who may well want a personal mandate?

And what argument could he make as leader, as opposed to on behalf of the party, for an extended mandate, when he is due to go well within the existing term? For all of those reasons, a snap election seems not only unlikely, but unwise. Of course, if nothing else, Dr. Brown has been the master of the unexpected, so no one should rule out the possibility.