Marjorie Smith argues that the darkest hour is before dawn, so Labour must stick to its guns and highlight Tory shortcomings

GORDON BROWN, the Government and party he leads are in deep crisis. Plummeting opinion poll ratings and severely embarrassing electoral performances seem to indicate that, after 11 years, Britain has had enough of this Labour Government.

Otto von Bismarck was the subject of a caricature drawn by Sir John Tenniel. “Dropping the Pilot” was first published in Punch in March 1890. It’s an image that springs to mind when hitherto successful political careers are deemed to be over and the media pack scents blood.

However, we need to remember where we are in the electoral cycle. The Prime Minister does not have to call the next general election for another two years. A convincing argument can be made that Labour is suffering from mid-term blues – a serious case, but not a terminal one. This is a standard political phenomenon that was clearly observable throughout the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. Only the dreadful ineptitude of the Tory opposition in the ’90s resulted in a suspension of the norms of public opinion over the lifetime of a Parliament. But normal service has now been resumed in British politics.

The Government has started reacting to events rather than driving forward its own agenda. This is helping to feed the current mood of morbidity. Yet Labour has a success story to tell and should not surrender to the siren calls of paranoia. And Brown is still the person best suited to steer this country through the present economic turmoil.

One factor undermining support for Brown’s premiership is that the party’s strategists are being out-triangulated by the Tories. They have turned one of Labour’s most successful electoral tools into a weapon to be used against the Government.

While David Cameron and the Conservatives finally dare to dream of power after a decade out of it, they know that they have not, as yet, managed to convince the British public they can be trusted. This will be the next stage of the Cameron project, inflating his leadership attributes, raising the profile of his frontbench team, while continuing to embrace triangulation.

So Labour has an opportunity to remind people why they have trusted it to run the country at the last three general elections – two of them won by landslide majorities. Labour must also expose what is a largely vacuous policy programme being offered by the Tories.

We should remember that ours is a social democratic country, with a deep commitment to the public sector providing universal healthcare and education. The British people have a generous spirit and want to make sure the poorest in society (especially those in work) are given the necessary help to keep them above the poverty line. One has only to consider the extent of the reaction to the disastrous abolition of the 10p tax band to understand that altruism is deeply embedded in our national psyche.

The country’s circumstances should be fertile ones for the Tories. Hence their co-ordinated public relations campaign to present themselves as progressives who have turned their backs on Thatcherism. Cameron, for instance, claims to have a deep love of and commitment to the National Health Service. The Tories condemned Labour over the 10p tax fiasco, but have not pledged to do anything about it.

The Conservatives know that an unreconstructed free-market orientated party could win power at the present time. In the same way that Labour, before 1997, symbolically cut itself off from its old roots, re-wrote Clause Four of its constitution and put some distance between itself and the trade unions, so the current Tory leaders are attempting to convince the electorate that they are much more centrist than their predecessors.

Yet the present crop of backbench Tory MPs are far more right-wing than the old Thatcherites. They combine messianic belief in the reforming power of markets with rabid Euroscepticism. Beyond this and a thirst for power, nothing binds them together and keeps them disciplined.

Part of Labour’s strategy must be to draw out how reactionary Cameron’s party is. In some ways, it is more right-wing now than when Thatcher was Prime Minister.

Politics is sometimes reduced to voter perceptions as the only thing that matters rather than the truths. Hence, Cameron’s various photo-opportunities and attempts to establish green credentials. In fact, the Tories’ policies on the environment are incoherent and untested. However, they are taken far more seriously in this area than they used to be. Environmental matters will be a vital election battleground on which Labour must be prepared to be radical in order to win the war of ideas.

Despite appearances to the contrary, it is not all bad news for Labour. The Government has done a lot of good things and there are achievements on which to build. Health, education, housing, the economy, law and order, and the environment are issues that matter to voters and will inform their choice at the ballot box.

Health and education should remain Labour’s strongest cards. It is clear to health service and education professionals that the massive increase in funding has had a transforming, beneficial effect on the nation. And many people have experienced these radically-improved services for themselves. A challenge for Labour is to sell a positive message about its core socialist policies before next general election – and that should start immediately.

Some move away from the authoritarian approach on law and order issues and some more radical thinking on the environment will also contribute to a formidable election manifesto that the Tories will struggle to match.

For all David Cameron’s posturing, over the next two years, no one in the Labour Party should forget the true nature of the Conservative opposition in the House of Commons. Meanwhile, Gordon Brown has been key to Labour’s success since 1997. Now is not the time to drop the pilot.