Archive for September 17th, 2008
17th September 2008
the curse of the conference season
With the blogoshphere thick with the rumours of a new opinion poll about to show the Tories on 52%, Labour on 24% and the Lib Dems on 12% it seems as if it just got a lot worse for Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown. This Conference was meant to be an opportunity to project Nick Clegg and the Lib Dem’s new Euro-sceptic, tax-cutting positioning, but Cameron-lite just doesn’t seem to be to the taste of the electorate. on this showing the joint Plaid-SNP group with 25-30 seats would overtake the Lib Dems to occupy the Front Bench and become the second largest Opposition party.
Meanwhile, Gordon Brown’s woes just won’t go away. Another Scottish MP is rumoured to be about to resign as a PPS. Why are all his Scottish colleagues deserting Brown? Is it because they’ve already been to Glenrothes and can see the writing on the wall? Labour has never fared well in an economic crisis. Think Ramsay MacDonald and 1929 - at the following General Election Labour split and was left with a rump of fifty or so MPs. In 1967 the badly handled devaluation of the pound left Harold Wilson’s reputation seriously damaged. And Jim Callaghan’s famous Crisis? What Crisis? quip as he returned begging bowl in hand from a trip to the IMF was the beginning of the end for the last Labour Government.
But if ever there was a Labour Prime Minister that should have been able to weather an economic storm it should have been the former Iron Chancellor. Labour Party members must be scratching their heads in disbelief.
In England the disaffected former Labour voters appear to be going Tory not Lib Dem, and in Wales Plaid are getting a huge uplift. Expect Labour to lose their second seat in Europe to us, to come third behind us and the Tories in Aberconwy and to lose Llanelli and Ynys Mon in a Summer General Election called by a new Labour Prime Minister.
Now where’s that draft mainfesto………