by Dan McCurry
The chickens have really come home to roost for the British Labour party. Look at the map that shows the whole of the south of England smothered with Tory blue with only the tiny enclave of inner London bearing the Labour red. This diagram demonstrates the confined extremity of the Labour core vote. It also shows how close we are to being wiped out. If you swapped the constituencies with pictures of cowboys and indians, it would be a diagram of Custer’s last stand.
In all my time as a Labour party member, I have never known this party to be in a greater state of denial. This Kosovo-style social-cleansing is not just nasty but also politically sinister, in that it aims to disperse that red; to disperse our people, our communities. They don’t care where they go, as long as they take their votes with them.
And while all this is happening, we, the Labour party, are slouching about discussing whether we should back AV. Shameful.
Wanna know what the AV camp are saying privately? I’ll tell you. They’re saying that if we please the Lib Dems, they’ll agree to form a coalition with us at the next election, and allow the Labour party to form a government. That’s what they’re saying. Allow us?
Just when the Lib Dems are on the ropes, these snivelling little runts in the Labour party want to divide us in order that the “united” Lib Dems can give permission for us to form a future government. These dividers want to get out the begging bowl and go grovelling to a party who are so insignificant that their HQ offices didn’t get smashed up by the students, only because no one knew where they were.
There is one way and one way only of dealing with the Tory-Lib Dem government; that is to vote it down, vote it down, vote it down.
Let the Tories get divided over AV, while we are united in campaigning to bring about an imminent general election. Here’s the strategy to achieve it:
In the recent Kentish Town by-election the Lib Dems stopped campaigning on the estates because they couldn’t explain their Kosovo policy. Half of the Lib Dem MPs are in traditional Labour seats, half are in Tory seats. Nick Clegg is currently getting punished for his error over tuition fees, but the Kosovo policy is far more damaging because the student vote is scattered while the housing vote is concentrated.
The Labour party needs to create a campaign concentrating on vulnerable Lib Dems. Simon Hughes in Southwark & Bermondsey is a good example. If we began voter ID campaigns in that constituency, I am convinced that the data we’d return would so frighten this MP that either he would vote against his party, or defect to Labour. Either way, we bring down the nasty parties in government.
So let’s not take the lead of Custer. While the Indians are circling and the arrows are pouring, we are not so foolish to fight a defensive battle, on their ground, and their terms. Now is not the time to offer gifts to the pitiful and struggling Liberal Democrats. Now is the time to come out fighting, on our ground, our terms and with our strategy. We all know how vulnerable this government is, so let’s concentrate our fire and attack, attack, attack.
Dan McCurry blogs here
Tags: attack, Dan McCurry, Kosovo
Take out Simon Hughes; Cameron and Clegg would be delighted!
AV is an irrelevance because the electorate will not have it;FPTP gives you a government, except last time!Concentrating on the Lib dems is a waste of time,Labour will never win an election again unless it can regain lost TORY voters: am I alone in remembering Blair 3-0?The electoral map shows the disaster beqeathed to us by Gordon Brown.The idea that the tory English taxpayer will subsidise Labour heartlands for ever is risible.Forget silly tactics and whether or not Simon HUghes wins next time.We need to appear before the electorate in 2014,say, as a potential UK government with policies that respect the English voter. This government is NOT vulnerable at all because our leader was elected only thanks to union voters(hardly flavour of the month since 1984),we have no well thought out policies,and when the Euro is going down the plug, no labour spokesman appears in a statesmanlike role.There is work to do!
I take it your Kosovo rhetoric is a reference to the proposed changes to Housing Benefit and that you believe that this change of policy will result in many more Labour voters than other voters being moved to non-Labour-voting areas.
Doesn’t this actually offer an opportunity to turn some of these blue areas red? Amongst all those Labour voters, there must be a fair sprinkling who are activists, or who can be turned into activists – perhaps by the very fact of having been obliged to move.
Even those voters who aren’t activists will have an effect, simply by living amongst people who traditionally are of a different hue. If you’ve never come across a Labour voter before, having a Labour neighbour will open your eyes and mind, surely?
Of course the widening of horizons will work both ways, but if these are safe seats it’s likely that the Conservatives will be rather complacent. With Labour membership increasing, the party must surely be well positioned to take advantage of this opportunity.
Er, William, Labour are just ahead in the opinion polls, largely as a result of progressive LibDems fleeing. There’s work to do, but it’s not a bad place to be in just now…