It speaks volumes about the depths to which Labour’s collective despair had sunk that a single opinion poll proffering the slimmest chances of a hung Parliament – not even a victory – at the next election should raise the spirits of MPs and activists. But if that’s what it takes, so be it. The Observer poll showing a sharp narrowing of the gap between Labour and the Tories does not constitute a seismic shift in the political landscape; it is only a poll after all. But it should be a wake up call to a party that has been in danger of sleepwalking to perhaps its biggest electoral humiliation for almost 80 years and potentially a terminal one for Labour.
As Paul Anderson writes on page 11, there is, just, a justifiable case for being less pessimistic about the election. Ian Aitken, on page 9, considers what many in the party must be coming around to considering: is a deal with the Liberal Democrats a price worth paying for keeping out a Tory government which – for all of David Cameron’s blarney – promises to be even more economically
right-wing than Margaret Thatcher’s?
But then the chances of Nick Clegg wanting an alliance with Labour rather than the Tories are dubious, as Vincent Moss examines on page 10. The landscape may not have shifted, but the debate has.
Now is the time to refocus energies behind a campaign which takes the fight to the Tories. The Queen’s Speech set the line – tinged with red in places – between Labour and the Tories. And Mr Cameron’s party is showing itself more vulnerable on policy, consistency and leadership with every passing week.
He even had the cheek, without any apparent irony, to accuse Gordon Brown of delivering an electioneering speech. Well, why on earth not? There is an election on, isn’t there?
The accusation that most of the 13 bills will not get through Parliament before the election was itself merely a piece of cheap electioneering. There is no reason, apart from the Tories in the House of Lords, why these measures should not be in place by the election.
Another poll confirming a narrowing of the gap should buoy Labour into greater expectations and greater effort. And yet…behind every silver lining is a cloud. In Westminster, the plotters see signs of an improvement in much the way a drinker sees a glass is half empty. They talk more or less openly about the prospect that, if the gap can close this much “in spite of” Mr Brown, what wondrous results might be achieved with a new leader?
The threatened test-run of a campaign to oust Mr Brown in the election of the chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party fizzled out in the wake of the Glasgow North East by-election. Yet support, whether he likes it
or not, is coalescing around Foreign Secretary David Miliband. There is talk of a challenge, if he can be persuaded to stand, before Christmas. Distracting though it is, it is likely to remain just talk. With a clear programme to fight on, the only talk should be of unity.
