Does this really mark the end of New Labour?By Steve Richards, Chief Political Commentator
The New Labour coalition of support has collapsed. To the left and to the right, voters are deserting the once-heaving big tent that propelled Labour to power and kept it there for more than a decade.
The Conservatives' overwhelming victory in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election is the latest, vivid sign of the new, formidably sized anti-Labour tent that is forming around the country. The local elections earlier this month and the ousting of Ken Livingstone as London Mayor were equally potent examples of the hostile anti-Government mood.
More worrying for Labour, the rival tent has been getting bigger for a long time. A year ago, before Gordon Brown was prime minister, Scotland turned against Labour and elected a minority SNP administration. In the 2005 general election, more voters in England supported the Conservatives than any other party. For a long time that once-bulging big tent full of admirers has been sagging ominously. For Labour the crisis is deep and deep-rooted.
The pivotal question for the Government is whether there is any way back. Can it rebuild an election-winning coalition of support? For Labour MPs in marginal seats the question is more tantalising because there is still two years before a general election must be called. There is time. When there is time there is hope.
As John Cleese observed in the film Clockwise, hope is dangerous. Despair is much safer and more enjoyable. The hope that something can be done, a lever can be pulled, leads Labour MPs and supporters towards a state of tortured anguish. A few of them are convinced that only a change of leader will save them. Others, including some senior cabinet ministers, wait and wonder, asking specifically what will happen if the current bleak political circumstances extend in to the autumn. Genuinely they are unsure what happens next.
The immediate causes of Labour's unpopularity provide the answer. Partly the Government is being punished for soaring petrol and food prices and the credit crisis. When the economy is fragile a government gets a kicking in by-elections. It is a fantasy to suggest that voters will forgive the Government if a new prime minister appeared, only to preside over the same worrying economic situation.
Listen carefully to the alternative agendas being put forward by tentative dissenters. With some exceptions most of it is meaningless waffle. At this point in time it is not obvious that anyone else is better suited to deal with the economic and political downturn compared with someone who was a formidable Chancellor for a decade and knows a thing or two about political downturns, having experienced many in different circumstances.
That does not mean by any means that Mr Brown is safe. Ironically, the lack of obvious ministerial titans scheming for the top job makes the Prime Minister more vulnerable. When Harold Wilson was in a weak position his weighty rivals cancelled each other out. Roy Jenkins, Jim Callaghan, Tony Benn and others preferred to stick with Wilson rather than risk someone else prevailing. The lack of clashing titans in the current Cabinet removes one barrier to change.
And yet compared with some unpopular prime ministers, Mr Brown has some cause for hope. He has a big majority in the Commons. The economy is not anywhere near as bad as it was in the dark days of the 1970s. His Government continues to make unreported progress on some fronts.
Although there is a forbidding anti-Labour mood among the electorate, David Cameron has yet to form his own pro-Conservative big tent. Once more yesterday, he claimed he had a powerful coalition of support, but he must flesh out some policy positions before he acquires his own big tent rather than benefit from the switch away from Labour. Brilliantly, he has decontaminated the Conservative brand. Much more successfully than New Labour he has placed his party's traditional values in a modern setting, but he has not yet explained what his brand of Conservatism would do with power.
For different reasons, Mr Brown and Mr Cameron should note that the Blairite approach of the mid-1990s, that so successfully created the original New Labour coalition, was never sustainable. There were too many strands of contradictory and conflicting opinions crammed into the big tent.
Mr Cameron has time to prove that he is not following too closely an outdated strategy adopted by Labour in the mid-1990s. Mr Brown has little time to show that he can renew a party twice. Arguably he was the main architect of Labour's recovery in the 1990s, constructing from scratch a new approach to economic policy. Now, he must wave a wand again. No one is sure he can do it or how he should go about trying to do so.
The reactions
n "It is the responsibility of senior members of the Cabinet to say, 'We're going in the wrong direction, it's impossible to change the situation that we are in at the moment' and to say to Gordon that they intend to stand for election." - Graham Stringer, Labour MP
n "The message that we have got is that people are concerned ... They're concerned about what's happening to the economy." - Gordon Brown, Prime Minister
"It was a vote ... against Gordon Brown, rather than in favour of a Conservative government." - Nick Clegg, Lib Dem leader
Independent
^^^^ You see some of the carry-on, and you wonder why they are so keen to defend the 'American' way...
