Can it get any worse for Labour?

The overall verdict on the result of the Glasgow East by-election, where the SNP overturned a Labour majority with a swing of 22%, seems to be that Gordon Brown can’t even win in the Scottish Labour heartlands, and a similar swing replicated across the country would all but destroy the party (20 MPs left is the figure being bandied about).

I don’t think it’s as bad as all that. It’s bad, certainly – I’m dreading a 1997-sized landslide for Tories at the next general election - but Labour lost to the Scottish Nationalists, who actually provided Labour’s core voters with a left-of-centre alternative. The SNP proved themselves as a credible political force last year when they took Holyrood, and with a largely positive year in power up there, I’m not surprised they performed so strongly in their first Westminster test since then.

South of the border, Labour are still the only major (ostensibly) left-wing party traditional Labour voters have to vote for, so they’ll do a better job of hanging on to their seats in northern cities and avoid a complete wipeout. But it’s still clear that the core voters don’t like the party any more. If Brown can’t prove that he’s on the side of the worker, many of them will not vote at all, or opt for the BNP, allowing the Tories or Lib Dems to sneak in in seats where Labour thought they had healthy majorities (cf Crewe and Nantwich, which was compounded by a poor campaign).

It’s looking more and more likely that Labour are going to have to make some kind of lurch to the left to win back their heartlands. With Cameron having basically won back the Middle England voters who elected Blair in 1997, the next election is lost – it seems that if they want to avoid utter humiliation, Labour’s job is to abandon their chase of the Daily Mail’s favour and focus on working-class friendly policies. (So a slight modification of my opinion after the local elections.)

What the Republican party is really like

Last week it emerged that Texan evangelical preacher John Hagee once told his flock that the Holocaust was God’s way of getting the Jews back into Israel. John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, responded by saying, “you know what John? I’d rather you hadn’t backed me for President. Have your endorsement back.” Which is fair enough.

The thing is, this Hagee character said back in April that Hurricane Katrina happened because of a gay parade in New Orleans, which was “offensive to God”. McCain was apparently okay with this. Not surprising for the cynics among you, but still: bloody hell.

Fun fact: Hagee has also referred to the Catholic Church as “the Great Whore”.

Hansard: how to read between the lines

Remember Tracy Temple, John Prescott’s old bit on the side? Ever wondered what she’s doing now? Tory frontbencher Eric “eats too many” Pickles does and has. Yesterday he asked Ed Miliband, who’s in charge of the civil service, in which Department she works.

Parmjit Dhanda, a minister at the Department for Communities and Local Government, was inexplicably asked to reply instead. He said:

“It is not Government practice to name individual civil servants below the senior civil service or comment on their employment.”

Erm, so that’ll be the DCLG then…?

What Labour should do next

These are some thoughts I’ve had over the past week or so about politics and that. Of course, if I was more committed to my art I would be writing in-depth about the draft legislative programme, but I’m not.

It looks like Labour will lose the next General Election. What Gordon will probably do is try and court the centre ground voter as much a possible, by pandering to the right-wing press. The trouble is, this hasn’t done much good in the past few months. The Tories have pretty much got the centre ground sewn up with Cameron’s changes, and I don’t think it’s Labour’s ideology that is doing them any harm in the polls but a string of blunders and half-baked policies that make them look incompetent and a spent force as a Government. The Tories have the initiative, policy-wise.

 

Labour’s undoing seems to be an obsession with polls and what the media thinks of them, and the way they act on this clearly isn’t working. Now that it looks highly likely the Tories will win the next General Election, I think they should abandon this and just be a bit more honest. Do what they think is right. Go back to core Labour values. They’ve got nothing to lose by doing so and maybe if people saw what the real Labour can do, they’d have a bit more respect for them.

 

If, somehow, like Major in 1992, they do manage to hang on in 2010, perhaps by ditching Gordon, there’ll just be another five years of division, dithering and unnecessary authoritarianism which will alienate Labour from the people, leaving the party like the Conservatives pre-Cameron. Another three or more terms in the wilderness. I agree with Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian today that a period in opposition would be refreshing the party – particularly all the young policy wonks who’ve known nothing but Government.

 

Cameron hasn’t got what Tony Blair has – sure he has some coherent ideas and a good joke writer – but I don’t think Labour are as hated as the Tories were by 1997. Obviously we’ll have to see how the recession goes. So assuming that we have only two more years in power, how about making the Labour Party something to believe in again? Ignore the press – except maybe the Guardian – and actually think policies through. Listen to and understand the swing voters but don’t go announcing the first thing that comes into your head in a shallow attempt to get them onside. Use the time also to push through things that the Conservatives are going to abandon when they get into office – target child poverty, for example. Leave the public services in a good state, so the Tories can’t beat us with the stick that we’ve beaten them with for the past eleven years. Then after four years of Cameron pissing everyone off with his smug, phoney ‘I care, honest’ line Labour won’t look as bad and might have a recovery.

 

Confused Tory policy on families

Derek Conway MP has been giving his sons public money for doing very little.

Nigel Waterson MP has been physically attacking his children.*

Which of these approaches to parenting does the Conservative Party actually stand for? They appear to be completely divided and I’m not at all impressed.

*Allegedly.

Don’t mention the rivers of blood

As much as I hate bigotry, doubt the veracity of immigrant-based scare stories and wish the Conservative Party ill, I can’t help thinking that the article at the centre of the latest row isn’t all that controversial.

Nigel Hastilow should totally resign as Tory candidate for Halesowen and Rowley Regis, but he really should have known better than to use the phrase “Enoch Powell was right”. He probably still is a big racist and all that, but he only said that the former Shadow Home Secretary was right about immigration causing Britain to have “changed dramatically”, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing when taken on its own. After all, even the pinkos at IPPR are calling for the issue to be addressed seriously.

It’s always wise to avoid citing pariahs when making an argument. It’s like saying, “Osama bin Laden was right. The United States did have a military presence in Saudi Arabia.”