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It is almost a racing certainty now that Labour will have one of the biggest defeats in history at the next election. Despite the bravura in Downing St this is clearly going to happen, unless we experience some kind of untold and miraculous 'Lazarus like' revival. Lazarus, you might remember, was brought back from the dead in Biblical lore, a miracle, but miracles are rare, and rarer still in politics.
There was a discussion about this inevitability on radio last night by veteran Labour MP's who have to a man accepted the gloom. Veteran Michael Meacher was the biggest name among the group. But yes gloom prevails and this despair was cemented by those awful lower tiered election results recently. Lower tiered they may be but they provide a vision of the cataclysmic failure to come.
The veteran MP's were calling for Labour to return to the way it was pre Tony Blair, when it was much more grass root oriented, all cloth caps and brown ale you might say.
In my view this would be a mistake. Tony Blair gave them 3 victories in a row by being the exact opposite to the previous cloth cap and brown ale image. He modernised, won so big and so well that he demanded reforms and got them. There should be no going back. The party is mainstream now and more acceptable to the wider voting public.
The voting market, if I can put it that way, that old labour stood for, is no longer there. The cloth cap johnnies and brown ale swiggers have moved mainstream with their 2.4 families and their plasma tv's. The goalpost has moved.Those horrible days of beer and sandwiches circa 1970 have thankfully gone. For Labour to return to those old roots would leave it isolated and stuck in the past, in an ugly timewarp, and probably make the party unelectable for the next 30 years.