Anthony Barnett (London, OK): In the post below, Jon Bright asks when did you decide that Brown had lost it? My answer is different from his, though not the timing. But behind it is the assumption that two years will not turn it around, even for another Labour leader. And if you think that is bad for Labour, well, it's worse.
I did a recent post on how badly the Lib Dems did in 2005. For their part Labour’s 'victory' masked an appalling performance. The underlying weakness was unprecedented: only 22 per cent of the total electorate voted Labour, abstentions were nearly twice that total, a shift of less than 20,000 votes could have led to a hung parliament. This was why Brown’s "snap election" strategy proved so vulnerable. And a critical factor will be the different rates of abstention. This is much influenced by the energy and determination of party members. So, what hope for Labour?
It is not that I don't believe the polls. But I trust informal feedback when it gives a sense of pattern and of minds 'made up'. Here are some from the last two weeks
The lifelong Labour Party member
Her indefatigable sister resigned because of Iraq. She stayed because “I have been a member all my life”. Her constituency is close to Harriet Harman’s. No one contacted her about supporting a deputy leadership candidate. She no longer attends meetings. She gets the minutes, numbers are very low, she knows all the names, no young people are joining. She is very disappointed. The Abrahams payments scandal really depresses her. She is the kind of person who makes a local party a living organisation. Immobile, the best way to describe her is that she has not lecft but is in every other way resigned.
A doctor’s mother
Her son has spent his twenties training first to be a doctor and then to become a specialist eye surgeon. On qualification last year he could not get a single interview in any hospital. He didn’t want to emigrate and got depressed. He is now coming out of it hoping to get a job near his wife and young family. "It’s mad". His mother will never vote for the government which did this.
A tax specialist
Not a natural Tory but a country women not a city slicker. I’m sure she did not vote Tory in 1997. For her, the tax regulations have quadrupled in thickness over the last ten years. An example, the government made a law that people and companies should not create loss making entities for the main purpose of tax avoidance. That was clear, she said, and she approved. But then the Treasury issued regulatory paper after paper second guessing what people might do, saying what examples would qualify for tax rebate! Her view, the entire culture of the Treasury under Labour is misconceived.
An architectural expert
More specialist, more ideological if you like, and more angry. Why is Labour building on the flood plains? The poor may be flooded. But as bad, the flood waters will rise as the spongy absorbing gravel is covered by housing. John Prescott was asked why he was doing this by a colleague, she claims, and just turned his back and walked away.
In all cases there is a sense of irreversible alienation. I sense the shadow if Iraq. Not the war but the sense of deception over something so cardinal. The sister who did leave the party: influential and a galvaniser will want a moral reckoning. I am trying to give human form to the phrase 'hollowed out'. Is Labour as a party capable of chasing the essential votes to turn an election? In a commanding survey of the current state of Labour in today's Sunday Telegraph, Martin Bright writes,
One reason that Labour's activist base has collapsed is that people on the Left will no longer fight for the party. A backbencher from a northern constituency described it to me like this: "I used to spend lots of my time recruiting new members for the party, but in all conscience I can't do it any more because I don't know what this government believes in."
How about Britishness? I was amused to see that one one week of the great launch of its 'Call yourself British' campaign, the Telegraph relegated it to a few inches on page 12, not a mention on the front and gave the top of the letters page to a nest of counter-attacks with not a note in its support.
