Labour politicians are already preparing for opposition. The race to succeed Gordon is on

Wednesday, 30th April 2008

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

So the smarter Labour MPs are thinking through their options: the game plan is to keep a respectable but not indecent distance from the slow-motion car crash which is the Labour government. But what then?

Those who support the ‘short bath for Labour’ theory argue that Mr Cameron is just another Tory charlatan who will be exposed soon after entering office. The British are a fair-minded bunch of people, they reason, who, after a decade of Labour, may want to let the other chaps have a go. But they expect Mr Cameron will win only by default in an election that is a referendum on Labour rather than an endorsement of the Tories, and be conspicuously unready for government. Prime Minister Cameron — this line of reasoning continues — would become overwhelmed by events and quickly exit stage right.

Even Labour MPs who credit the Tory leader with enough appeal to win the next election seem genuinely to expect him to be useless in government. To my mind, this recalls the fatal underestimation of Mr Cameron by the Brownites when he won the party leadership in 2005. But this is, for better or worse, the state of most Labour thinking. One MP put it to me that if Neil Kinnock had triumphed in the 1992 election, the Tories would almost certainly have been back after a term because Labour was, at that point, ready to exploit the public’s dissatisfaction with the Tories after 13 years of government, but still unready to govern. The parallel criticism, he said, applies to Mr Cameron now.

Perhaps the least plausible of all post-Gordon Labour theories is that the party would, in opposition, realise how daft it had been to jettison the Blair formula of market-based reforms on public services. After the Tories grapple unsuccessfully with this agenda — or so it is argued — Labour would promise, at last, to deliver it properly at a 2015 election. The biggest flaw in their theory is that there will scarcely be enough Blairites to fill a taxi, far less a shadow Cabinet, after the next election. A Cameron majority can only happen in the first place if a third of Labour MPs lose their seats — a cull of the moderates who were swept to power in the 1997 landslide.

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Victor Newman

May 2nd, 2008 4:44pm Report this comment

This article assumes that anyone actually knows how to operationalise the "formula of market-based reforms on public services" without changing the political structure of the UK. At the moment there are too many competing bodies involved with poorly-defined roles, the bodies involved have failed to synthesise the lessons, decided the scale, and identified the political level of leverage required, and the scale of change required for ROI.

jon livesey

May 3rd, 2008 1:35am Report this comment

All Maggie had to do was to remove the dead hand of Government from the economy, and after that it revived itself.

Imagining that anyone has to "know" how to apply market-based reforms to public services is to give in to the idea that someone has to "manage" a free market.

Remove the dead hand of Government and health and eduction will revive themselves, just as Telecommunications, Steel, the City and Aerospace did.

It won't be pretty, but it will happen.

Stephen

May 3rd, 2008 10:13am Report this comment

If a week is a long time in politics two years is an awful long time. This Labour government are not finished by a long way. There are still plenty of talented people there. As for the Tories well they still have a long way to go. Watch this space.

Barry Holmes

May 4th, 2008 6:37am Report this comment

Ed Balls yes a big left winger and one who together with his wife have one of the biggest expense claims with in parliament
which to me is indicative of his character.

dirty european socialist

June 5th, 2008 9:59am Report this comment

I predict labour will win the next election. The PM has great mental strenght and intellgence. Look at the way he recovered from losing an eye to get a double first. An he lost a child recntely but still was not broken. He is never broekn and never gives in,. He our leader. He is very mentally strong, intelligent and has good christian moral values. I think he will rise back and win like he allways does. Do not underestimate him.

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