Labour's one trick pony, vote Labour because your Granny did, is now so knackered that it is only fit to be put out to grass. The myth of them being 'for the people' has been debunked once and for all in what was for decades their homelands of Northern England and Scotland.
Prior to the 7th of May the usual media suspects were telling Scots that a vote for the SNP was a betrayal of English socialists and UK worker solidarity. The idiocy of the idea that the only way to stop the Tories was for Scotland to vote Labour, deflated like a slow puncture as the statistical analysis exposed one main truth: the English electorate always decide the party of Government for the rest of the UK and have done consistently since 1945.
Labour failed to win England as their support stayed at home. Labour lost Scotland because they had become 'Red Tories' in the eyes of their previous supporters then went on and proved the point by anointing a Blairite, right wing, proponent of caring neo-liberalism (an oxymoron if there ever is one) Jim Murphy as the man to save the Scots from themselves and do the 'right thing' by Labour.
As Murphy and McCluskey bickered in Scotland, Ed Milliband was pushed this way and that by Hampstead and Islington focus groupies, the ordinary folk across the UK came to the same conclusion, there is little or no difference between the proper Tories and the Labour Tories.
Labour are losing vote share because they have nothing to say to the social democrat and socialist voters who still inhabit the UK in large numbers. In Scotland they faced a proven, tested and effective left of centre social democratic party portrayed as 'MacMarxists' by the London media (who also talk less and less to the people of the UK, more and more to themselves and the Westminster bubble) and lost all but one seat. In the SW of England, long a bastion of England's social democratic soul, the electorate kept their hands in their pockets because they had no one to vote for. In the Northern socialist leaning counties Labour lost traction to UKIP in a 'you are not listening to us' protest vote, similar to the initial rise of the SNP at Holyrood.
Labour can learn from its Scottish disaster and the starting point has little to do with the battles for the soul of the 'party' between all the usual factions, think tanks and focus groups nor through the civil war now raging in LCP's across the UK nor whether it should chase 'big business' or stick with the Trade Unions.
The starting point is Labour does not know what it stands for. Labour looks and sounds like a minime Tory Party which is trying to pretend it is left of centre but whose core policies are right of centre and barely social democratic in any shape or form.
People do not vote for a 'pig in a poke' party like Labour, even if it is wrapped in your Grannies' old Labour ticked ballot papers. Until Labour get their head around 'You can not fool all the people all the time' they are doomed to continue to repeat the errors and failures in their attempts to recapture the sham that was Blairism and a reducing vote share in England.
Prior to the 7th of May the usual media suspects were telling Scots that a vote for the SNP was a betrayal of English socialists and UK worker solidarity. The idiocy of the idea that the only way to stop the Tories was for Scotland to vote Labour, deflated like a slow puncture as the statistical analysis exposed one main truth: the English electorate always decide the party of Government for the rest of the UK and have done consistently since 1945.
Labour failed to win England as their support stayed at home. Labour lost Scotland because they had become 'Red Tories' in the eyes of their previous supporters then went on and proved the point by anointing a Blairite, right wing, proponent of caring neo-liberalism (an oxymoron if there ever is one) Jim Murphy as the man to save the Scots from themselves and do the 'right thing' by Labour.
As Murphy and McCluskey bickered in Scotland, Ed Milliband was pushed this way and that by Hampstead and Islington focus groupies, the ordinary folk across the UK came to the same conclusion, there is little or no difference between the proper Tories and the Labour Tories.
Labour are losing vote share because they have nothing to say to the social democrat and socialist voters who still inhabit the UK in large numbers. In Scotland they faced a proven, tested and effective left of centre social democratic party portrayed as 'MacMarxists' by the London media (who also talk less and less to the people of the UK, more and more to themselves and the Westminster bubble) and lost all but one seat. In the SW of England, long a bastion of England's social democratic soul, the electorate kept their hands in their pockets because they had no one to vote for. In the Northern socialist leaning counties Labour lost traction to UKIP in a 'you are not listening to us' protest vote, similar to the initial rise of the SNP at Holyrood.
Labour can learn from its Scottish disaster and the starting point has little to do with the battles for the soul of the 'party' between all the usual factions, think tanks and focus groups nor through the civil war now raging in LCP's across the UK nor whether it should chase 'big business' or stick with the Trade Unions.
The starting point is Labour does not know what it stands for. Labour looks and sounds like a minime Tory Party which is trying to pretend it is left of centre but whose core policies are right of centre and barely social democratic in any shape or form.
People do not vote for a 'pig in a poke' party like Labour, even if it is wrapped in your Grannies' old Labour ticked ballot papers. Until Labour get their head around 'You can not fool all the people all the time' they are doomed to continue to repeat the errors and failures in their attempts to recapture the sham that was Blairism and a reducing vote share in England.
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