New Labour’s final collapse

25 April 2007

Fraser Nelson takes to the road and finds voters turning to whichever parties will maximise the mutiny against Blair and Brown. The SNP is now a party of protest, not separatism — but have the Tories done enough to stay on track for power?

It was the same story on other farms we visited. There is no shortage of hatred of Labour (one breeder of Texel sheep suggested Mr Blair should be ‘taken to the Tower’), but they accuse Tories of the same kind of complacency in their rural seats which Labour is being found guilty of in Scotland.

It is a sign that the Lib Dems — uniquely in Westminster — are stronger locally than they are centrally. ‘They’re like ants,’ one Conservative MP tells me. ‘They get everywhere. And I hate to say they are holding up against us very well in rural seats. They seem to have a message, and too many of our councils just don’t.’ Mr Cameron’s ‘vote blue, go green’ slogan is designed to woo the Lib Dems — what the party calls a ‘love bomb’. It makes much strategic sense. But the lesson from the Lake District is that party infrastructure is no less important. Your message is irrelevant if you don’t have a good delivery system.

To be fair, the Conservatives are only too aware of this. On the train to Shropshire, Mr Osborne laid out the land. Labour will surrender its Westminster majority if it loses seats in the south, which looks likely. But for the Conservatives to win outright, a much higher hurdle needs to be cleared. The Tory party must also win in the north, and bag the 19 marginal seats in West Yorkshire. To do this, it must first establish a presence in these constituencies. And contesting council seats it once left abandoned is the first step in a recovery process which has a long way to go.

But if the Tories are not yet winning the north, Mr Osborne can at least take comfort from the fact that Labour is definitely losing it. The Yorkshire Post had this to say in an editorial: ‘If the Tories fail to capitalise on disillusionment with the Blair government, they will not only let themselves down but an electorate crying out for change.’ Indeed. The appetite for change is there, and it is growing: the only question is who will profit from it. That seems certain to be the main political story of the next few years. But the narrative for next week’s elections is simply one of Labour implosion.