Bouncy Brown is back on the ropes. Hopes of a summer fight-back have been dashed with a snapshot summer poll showing Labour voters prefer delectable Dave to the struggling Supreme Leader. Even the Party faithful are deserting in droves. Brown-beaten voters haven't the stomach for yet another fight-back.
Analysis of opinion polls are best left to politicalbetting and UK polling but every now and again one comes along which brings a smile to the face and wipes the smug smile of the faces of the cronies who are crippling the country. The Guardian/ICM poll does just that.
Asked, regardless of individual party preferences, whether a Tory government under Cameron, or a Labour one under Brown, would be best for the country, most people backed Dave.
And it gets worse. A Cameron government is the clear preference of most LibDems.
For a short while it seemed people were been taken in by the great big grin and believed the summer spin.
Despite relentless policy attacks from the summer stand-in Supreme Leaders in waiting, the row over who loves the NHS most and the muddled mess over the hopeless Afghan war, has seen the Tories extend their lead to 16 points.
Now even 24% of current Labour voters think the Tories would improve the NHS. The Tory lead on other policies, including education, is bigger.
That should come as no surprise but it does raise a smile and raise a real fear.
The great muddled mass in the middle are finally making up their minds. The Tory lead will grow stronger as sure as eggs is eggs as voters make a positive decision to vote Tory rather than a disillusioned protest vote against the New Labour government.
Nick Cohen has already hit the nail on the head: “The campaign will be a massacre. Four weeks of Cameron - whom you can’t help liking even if you disagree with him - vs Brown - whom you can’t help disliking even if you agree with him”.
The Orange Party has long banged the drum for an early election, ever since bottling Brown, well bottled it in the heady summer of love. Not out of dotting love for Dave and the boys and girls in blue but out of love for a Labour Party highjacked by Blairite lies, spin and deceit.
That early election view was shared by some political strategists but not by New Labour politicians who want to hang on until the bitter end in the hope that something would turn up while they scrabble around to feather their own nests.
A new Party may rise which is not in the pockets of big business and which is not paying lip-service to civil liberties and meddling with peoples lives. But voters should be careful what they wish and vote for.
The government has lost the August battle. Now the phoney war is hotting up with tight-lipped Brown crawling out of the woodwork reportedly ready to issue a shopping list of spending cuts in a desperate bid to reign in self-inflicted public debt.
What is the point of an autumn 'fight-back' when all the trust has gone up in smoke and mirrors? Give it a rest and give up. The Party might pick up a few votes.
The proverbial parrot of the New Labour project isn't resting. It's dead. While licking its wounds, the Labour Party has a chance to purge itself of Blair-lites. The Party can return to its roots and rediscover its once popular purpose.
New Labour deserves a good kicking at the election but the total wipe-out which is on the cards makes for unhealthy politics. The fear is that will leave a Party so demoralised, so disillusioned and so roundly beaten, it will not even make the grade as a credible opposition. It will be 1997 all over again but with the tables turned.
The Orange Party is the first in the queue to volunteer as cheerleader for the demise of New Labour. But at this rate it will take another decade before a credible Labour Party is ready to fight again, leaving a decade of a Tory government to do whatever takes its fancy.
That is the Brown legacy and the legacy of a fag-end government which refuses to put itself or the country out of its misery as it clings on for its own selfish and arrogant ends.
1 comment:
I sincerely hope that the Labour Party is annhialated so that it can NEVER again become a party of Government. Every time Labour gets into power, the economy is trashed. I hope the British people have finally learned their lesson, after the appalling Government of the unelected Brown and Mandelson.
We need a new Opposition. One with some principles and which will actually represent the peoples' wishes. Labour ceased doing that a long long time ago. With our first past the post system, realistically a new Opposition won't come about until Labour is destroyed and unelectable - so that's what I hope the outcome is.
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