Over-optimistic or just poorly served?
OK it seems that I got a little carried away in my post of November 7th last year, http://theredimp.wordpress.com/2008/11/07/glenrothes-a-corner-turned-for-labour/, but why has it all gone wrong for Labour since that encouraging by-election result?
My original post called for Gordon Brown to build on the Glenrothes success. Realistically the only way he could do this was to show true leadership to the party and the country by way of a programme of radical policies to reverse the damage done by 29 years of Tory government from Thatcher to Blair. Instead he showed us what he really is – a ditherer without any clear vision of how the country should be run. An adequate Chancellor, maybe; a leader, never! Brown’s problem is that his ideas (when he has them) are usually guaranteed to underwhelm rather than excite the electorate – remember the pathetic £50 increase in pensioner’s winter fuel allowance at the 2008 budget? You should have doubled their allowance Gordon. You had the chance to make a real difference and you blew it.
Last week, in marked contrast to the Glenrothes success, Labour suffered its worse night ever at the hands of the electorate, losing control of its four remaining County Councils and being pushed into third place by the Nazi-lite sub-fascism of UKIP.
But it’s an ill wind etc etc… Brown had failed the party and the people of Britain, Labour MPs were running scared as even majorities of 10,000 suddenly looked vulnerable. It was time to act to rid the Labour Party of the millstone around its neck. The scene was set. Cabinet ministers were jumping over the edge faster than a swarm of migrating lemmings and a gang of political heavyweights (most of the Blairites, unfortunately but we can’t have everything) were preparing to deliver the knockout blow at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP).
So what happened? It appears that the threat of no central support at the General Election was enough to scare of most of the rebels. Given a choice of total annihilation under Gordon Brown or a really bad defeat under the new champion of proportional representation, Alan Johnson, the MPs chose the devil they know and settled down to await the inevitable.
Where now? You can bet that the so-called “radical measures to put a revived parliament back at the centre of British political life” will turn out to be seriously underwhelming. If I thought for one moment that Brown really believed in a parliamentary democracy I might cut him some slack but we all know that he can’t let go of the current system, introduced by Thatcher and followed slavishly by Blair and Brown, where the Prime Minister and his unelected advisors are the only people who really have a say. Inevitably the Government will fade slowly and painfully and will finally be euthanised by the British voters around May or June 2010.
Let’s look on the bight side again. A few years of Cameron and his old-Etonian cronies will at least mean that we get some of our County Councils back!!!
