Was it Blair, Brown, Cameron, the economy ..or just old age?

A must-read piece in the latest Economist tries to work out what went wrong with “what has been one of the great election-winning forces in British political history” – New Labour.

Looking forward to the election it goes on: ” On current form, the resulting defeat may be Labour’s worst since the second world war. In the aftermath of such a rout, some Labour supporters fear, the party may disintegrate, with a revived Old Labour faction, wedded to the ideals of punitive taxation and a monolithic state, reasserting its anachronistic grip….he grand coalition of working- and middle-class voters that swept Mr Blair to power in 1997—enabling him, with hubris but some justification, to describe his party as “the political wing of the British people”—has crumbled. Disappointments have mounted, as they must; the public craves new faces; antagonism to the Tories has faded. New Labour understands that natural process, which is partly why it replaced Mr Blair, just as the Tories confected an impression of change by installing Mr Major in place of Margaret Thatcher……The grand coalition of working- and middle-class voters that swept Mr Blair to power in 1997—enabling him, with hubris but some justification, to describe his party as “the political wing of the British people”—has crumbled. Disappointments have mounted, as they must; the public craves new faces; antagonism to the Tories has faded….“Their time is up.” Mr Blair said of the Tories in 1994: “Their philosophy is done. Their experiment is over.” New Labour seems, at the moment, to have reached that point too. Old age, penury, Mr Cameron, Mr Brown: they are all incriminated. But, in the end, New Labour killed itself.”

The above are only just snippets – read the full article to get the overall picture.

Mike Smithson