Labour pains

Unsurprisingly the papers have been dominated by reports linked to Labour’s conference in Brighton. For many activists and journos 2009 carries echoes of the Tories circa 1997 or Labour 1979 (though in both cases, no-one knew how bad it was to become) as the current government stare down the barrel of defeat and quite possibly years out of power that will be measured in double digits.

The Sunday Times marks out a couple of competing scenarios on whether Gordon Brown might stay or go.

And there a couple of stories about whether Labour might actually be dying on its feet. A ST editorial argues that the future is bleak for Labour, and the doomsayers can find further evidence to support this prediction in a report from a Labour think tank which predicts Armageddon post Cameron victory.

Personally I can envisage a scenario where Labour lose direction after the next election since there seems to be an unwritten rule that parties turn to the dark side after a crushing and/or humiliating defeat. Witness the Labour party after 1979, the Tories after 1997. Or, on the other side of the Atlantic, the Democrats after 1980, or the Republicans at the current time. But who (which group?) will be in the ascendancy after Brown? Will it be those on the left who will argue that Labour squandered the opportunity to turn Britain into the centre left country that it really is, or will the Blairites win by arguing that the reforms TB started did not go far enough? (The latter at least giving the party half a chance in 2014/15.) And whoever wrestles control, what damage will the inflict on the party’s prospects of bouncing back at the polls at the next available opportunity?

There are some who support the view that Cameron is going to turn out to tbe much more readical than he appears. That he will he will turn out to be a modern Thatcher. But then the same thing was said of Blair: that he was only a pretend moderate and when he got control of the reins of power he would unleash his vision of a socialist Britain.

Though returning to the point about whether a new decade in the wilderness will give rise to a realignment in British politics in the near future, I just can’t see it. Talk of the death of Labour seems premature, even if there is a lot of evidence to say that it will have to face being given its last rights after an SDP like breakaway.

Change in British politics is by degrees and any change a government can effect takes place over mulitiple, not single, terms. Britain was radically altered after several Conservative governments during the Thatcher era, but the same cannot be said of the UK after a decade plus of New Labour. Yes, the current economic situation could seem like the kind of rupture that helped project radical ideas and solutions to the fore in the 1970s but back then we as a country suffered a steady spiral of decline, and the same cannot be said of recent years.

My predicition? Years of Cameron woes in government and for the pendulum to swing back to Labour much quicker than many imagine.