The percentage of people identifying themselves as Socialist is the lowest it has ever been, hovering around the early teens. Ed Miliband’s strategy of appealing to Labour’s core vote by trumpeting the politics of envy in his attacks on “the rich” and non-doms, and by promulgating the mansion tax, might have worked if that core vote represented 40 per cent of the electorate, as he thought it did.
But Britain’s demographics have changed radically in the past two decades and we now know it is only 30 per cent.
Furthermore, the collapse of similar Left-wing experiments in France, Venezuela, Greece and elsewhere have given Labour no foreign role models for reference. That middle ground of British politics occupied so formidably by Tony Blair has now been taken by David Cameron, and Labour has no hope of getting back into power with its traditional messages and the support of a “rainbow coalition” of society’s excluded, either.
The legalisation of same-sex marriage by the Coalition meant that in this election the gay vote didn’t lean so heavily towards Labour. Indeed, it’s thought that the vote divided equally between Labour and the Tories. Similarly, Cameron’s work in trying to lessen racial and sexual inequality in modern Britain has shot Labour’s fox in those two key demographics, too.
The days when Labour politicians such as Ken Livingstone could ride to power on “a coalition of the dispossessed” are over.
As fewer people see themselves as victims of society and of life, so the Labour core vote will decrease further, especially if Cameron and Osborne continue to demonstrate to the British people that it’s not just “the 1 per cent” who have benefited from the economic recovery.
Similarly, the tired old scaremongering messages that Labour has depended on for decades — such as that “secret Tory plan” to privatise the NHS — have pretty much had their day now, because despite the accusation being made in no fewer than eight consecutive general elections, the voters have spotted that health care in Britain is still free at the point of delivery.
Additionally, private Tory polling found that far from alarming voters, the promise to cut welfare spending actually appealed to large numbers of working taxpayers, who were more likely to vote Tory. So the bogey words “austerity” and “cuts” that Miliband hoped would encourage people to vote Labour backfired. In the only place where the anti-austerity message worked — Scotland — Labour were comprehensively outmanoeuvred on the Left by the SNP. Yet even without the Scottish revolution, David Cameron would still have become Prime Minister.
With boundary changes set to deliver an extra 20 or so seats to the Tories in 2020 through fairer and up-to-date redistricting, Ukip’s anti-immigration message giving Labour seats to the Tories in the North and Midlands, and the likelihood of either McCluskey’s boy, Andy Burnham, or the profoundly uncharismatic Yvette Cooper becoming Labour leader, the time must surely come when Labour MPs must wonder whether it’s really worth carrying on.
So why not, while they still have a shred of dignity left, call it a day? Some could join the Greens, others could reinvigorate the Lib-Dems, and the braver and more honest of them could set up a Socialist Party which could propagate the anti-bourgeois, anti-business agenda that many of them went into politics for in the first place.
It’s not as if the EU referendum is going to restore their fortunes — partly because they are divided on it, but also because Cameron’s stance on fundamental renegotiation of our relationship with the EU chimes in with the view of a majority of Britons.
If Scotland gets devo-max within the Union and Britain gets it within the EU, Labour will have nothing of importance and interest to say anywhere. Ukip, which won the third largest number of votes, has transmogrified beyond being a single issue party, so Labour shouldn’t count on Nigel Farage’s party collapsing after a defeat in the referendum. Nor can Labour hold out any real prospect of Cameron’s majority disappearing before the next election.
Even if several seats are lost by the ruling party in the traditional way (death or bankruptcy) during this Parliament, the DUP can be relied upon to keep the Government in office. As Ken Clarke put it: “You can always do a deal with an Ulsterman.”
True, there might be some objection to my modest proposal from those people who work full-time for the Labour Party, but I suspect that among the rank and file there would be a collective sigh of relief that the whole charade does not have to be indulged in any longer.
Once the party has disbanded they can pursue the kind of politics in which they really believe, instead of having to talk about “aspiration”.
For even if Labour does succeed in pronouncing the word in time for the next election, voters will know that it’s one they learnt from Margaret Thatcher, David Cameron and George Osborne. When Tony Blair said in the last election that “a traditional Left-wing party battling a traditional Right-wing party would end in the traditional outcome”, he was pointing out that Britain is fundamentally a centre-Right country and that the Tories are the traditional party of government.
His own recipe for success — looking and sounding centre-Right himself — is simply not an option open to Burnham or Cooper. The Labour Party has done some fine things for this country over the past 115 years, but now its raison d’etre and its chances of office are gone, it really should consider joining the Country Party and the Whigs in the history books. And if it does decide to follow my advice to dig its own grave and bury itself, it already has the headstone.
— The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2015
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