Even before the votes are counted in today's local and London Mayor elections, a debate has begun in the Labour Party about how Gordon Brown should fight back. Which, even allowing for the pre-match spin by all the parties, tells us that Labour folk are expecting Brown to get a very bloody nose.
Labour MPs tell me that things were bad enough before the row over Brown's abolition of the 10p bottom rate of income tax. That proved the final straw, alienating both the low paid and the better off, who felt it was unfair to clobber those at the bottom. The compensation package announced last week seems too late to limit the damage, Labour MPs report from the doorsteps. No details have been disclosed, and angry workers have been marching into MPs' constituency offices waving the payslips showing they are already paying more tax.
As the think tanks and pressure groups gear up for a big debate about Labour's future direction, there's already a good contribution from Sunder Katwala, general secretary of the Fabian Society. A Brown ally, he argues that Brown needs to be himself, be bolder and offer the change he promised when he took over last summer.
In the forthcoming Fabian Review, he says Brown should ditch the Clinton-Blair strategy of "triangulation" - splitting the difference between traditional left-right positions. He argues: "Cleaving in 2008 to the tactics of 1997 is to fail to understand New Labour's success in converting the Conservatives to progressive aspirations and language. It amounts to an offer to fight the general election on David Cameron's terms." See also his post on Open House.
The gossip in Labour circles is that Brown is going to take the bad results on the chin and accept responsibility rather than make lame excuses about the global economy. We shall see. Getting his response right will only be the first step in what will be a long and difficult road back.
How should Bunter Brown fight back?
Why - from the Back Benches, of course!!
Posted by: Neil McGowan | Thursday, 01 May 2008 at 03:39 PM
Will the Labour party and its MPs, now realise, treat the voters as inconsequential, and they will get severely bitten.
It is not only about 10p in the pound, it is about ignoring the electors who put them in power.
It is about denying the electorate a say in just where this country is going, the denying of a referendum on the Euro Constitution/treaty, one and the same thing, then insulting us by saying it is beyond our understanding to be able to vote sensibly!!???? A classic example.
Write to your MP, write to your PM, silence...ignorance more like.
If they want to even contemplate saving Labour at the next general election, they had better get their ears to the ground, and living up to their manifesto promises, and that certainly requires a serious, serious rethink about Europe before it is too late, their vote on this issue is illegal, and thus its validity is null and void.
The Human Rights Act, has become a sledgehammer of injustice to victims and that of commonsense.
tosha
Posted by: Tosha | Friday, 02 May 2008 at 09:17 PM
It's funny how tosha resembles the British equivalent of the 'angry white man' demographic that Hillary Clinton's now courting in my (expatriate) locale, while Obama's offering a very different vision and base.
Brown's not going to hold onto power by kow-towing to that segment of the Labour vote that is for the unions and against the foreigners, especially the Muslims. (And I'm thinking of my own dad here.) Not when you have the vast right wing of xenophobes, from Tory to UKIP to BNP who'll embrace it with much greater enthusiasm.
Posted by: pseudonymous in nc | Saturday, 03 May 2008 at 07:53 AM