Things keep getting worse for Labour

Mike. Brighton

Cruddas will be the next labour leader following the forthcoming bloodbath....if he holds onto his seat!

mac

The notion (see the first comment following Bright's piece) that New Labour is 'right wing' is noteworthy; if the Labour faithful agrees and decides to lurch left then Cruddas is a strong contender, complete with tribute donkey jacket, perhaps? However, the Blairite rump won't readily accept a 1983-style suicide note Manifesto. Interesting times!

Austin Barry

The morning after the 1993 Canadian federal election when the ruling Conservatives lost 167 out of 169 seats, I remember remarking to a colleague that the two panhandlers on a Toronto street corner may well be the entire Tory parliamentary party. With luck I can resurrect the suitably amended comment after the next UK election.

Socialistutopia

The only person that deserves to be Labour leader is Gordon Brown. Nobody else has been so arrogant and reckless with the economy to deserve the humiliation of having to lead the country in the state that it is presently in.

David C

A GE is the time for a party to gain fresh blood. If the defeat is as severe as the Party itself seems to be expecting, then that chance will have gone.
Far from renewing itself, the Party will be driven backwards - diminished. It will have to look among people like Miliband to form a leadership to carry it through the lean years.
When the smoke clears and survivors clamber out of the ruins and survey the wasteland that will be the Labour Party, I’m not sure there’ll be much appetite for a bloodbath.

FF

"The consequences could be worse even than those that followed the election defeats of 1983 and 1987, because no one realistically expected Labour to win them."

Surely no-one realistically expects Labour to win the forthcoming GE... do they?

Richard Holloway

If Labour lose the next general election (and no other government has ever gone on to win after such appauling local election results in the years preceeding the GE) then they will lurch violently to the left and will be unelectable for a generation.

Pauline from Dagenham

Cruddas has nothing to offer the Labour party that couldn't be delivered by another servant of Trade Union (producer interest) money.

Faceless Bureaucrat

There are few people around Whitehall at the moment, even Labour activists, who can see this state of affairs lasting till 2010. The consensus seems to be that if Cruddas can get the Unions sufficiently mobilised post-Conference, he could oust Brown before Christmas. Yes, Labour would still lose the subsequent General Election, but some marginal seats that currently look there for the taking by the Conservatives might instead remain Labour, as sufficient voters move back to support the Party. A landslide would be averted, leaving at least some semblance of a foundation on which to build the new, left-of-centre Labour Party. The rump of the Blairite wing would then either have to go the ‘SDP route’ (i.e. political oblivion) or get into bed with the Lib Dems. How different it all seemed in 1997…

mac

Photo caption:
"Merde! Miliband said what, Sir Kofi?

Socialistutopia

The only person that deserves to be Labour leader is Gordon Brown. Nobody else has been so arrogant and reckless with the economy to deserve the humiliation of having to lead the country in the state that it is presently in.

Concerned Citizen

People have scarily short memories these days - two weeks ago the nation basked in Olympic glory; now, who cares?

A Labour leadership change would revitalise the party. And, with Brown quickly forgotten, might win them the next election.

No point messing about, get on with it guys. Do the right thing. He'll thank you for it later.

Trafalgar

Charles Clarke has clearly tired of waiting for Miliband and Straw to accelerate the process of removing Brown and has taken it upon himself to be a stalking horse - this is the end-game.

The Labour Party in its current guise is finished - there's no common purpose, no ideas - no one now knows what it stands for.

It will have to swing left to survive. Cruddas is the darling of the unions but he doesn't want to be leader - he just wants to be a running-mate and I believe he's already agreed to back Harman. Harman must be good value at current odds (12-1?) to be next PM - place your bets now. And if you thought Brown was bad..

David C

Are any of them going to repeal one of the laws or regulations they have passed?
Will they get rid of the Police community Support Officers plodding about in their uniforms?
Will they stop the Community Welfare Safety workers wandering round taking names and car license numbers?
Will one of these NuLabour Commissars cut the number of jobsworths exercising to the utmost the merest iota of power they possess?

Not on your life.

Damn the lot of them.
Damn Labour and all its works.
Welcome to the Police State that was Great Britain.