Labour leadership 'has lost will to live', says Darling

[oldironside]

"Alistair Darling has revealed his frustration at the collapse in Labour morale under Gordon Brown, accusing his party – from the prime minister down – of handing power to the Tories without a fight.

On the eve of what many MPs believe could be Labour's final conference as a governing party for a decade, the normally restrained chancellor delivers a stinging rebuke to the entire Labour hierarchy, which he says appears to have lost "the will to live", and warns that a Conservative government would "crash the economy".

His intervention comes as, for the first time, Brown acknowledges the depths of the trouble Labour is in, telling delegates they face the "fight of their lives" next spring – while the Welsh secretary, Peter Hain, concedes that even if the party pulls itself together Labour may be unable to reverse the Tories' poll lead before the election is called."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/sep/26/labour-has-lost-will-darling

At last someone at the top of the Labour party has had the balls to say it. Could it be we are about to see some small spark of fight before the election? I'm not holding my breath.

[non sociopath skin]

1. The last and worst betrayal perpetrated by "New Labour" ....

... is likely to be its craven abandonment of the country to an unbridled free-market Thatcherism - with a paranoid Neo-Con and Little Englander tinge - just at the time when it's exactly the wrong solution.

If this happens, it's unlikely that Labour can ever be trusted again and our best efforts will probably lie in working for a re-alignment of the Left-of-Centre.

The Skin

[Hopeless Romantic]

2. He's right, Mandleson is even angling for a job with the Tories

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6848544.ece


Disgraceful little man.

[oldironside]

3. I can't get the link to open...

... but I wouldn't be at all surprised.

To be honest, he does have his uses. He is an extremely able election strategist, and would be best in this position. But giving him any sort of political power is a very bad idea. He is (as Major Neuheim described Private Schulz) "a totally corrupt human being. Shifty, slimy and sly."

[Hopeless Romantic]

4. Sorry, wrong link

here's the right one

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6850863.ece

[T_i_B]

5. It's not just the leadership IMHO

It seems to be the whole party from top to bottom that's lost it's sense of purpose.

What's also depressing is that the Lib Dems appear to be going the same way under Clegg.

[oldironside]

6. It does feel depressingly like 1979...

... in as far as some of the party feeling a short spell in opposition would do it good. As we all know, that short spell was 17 years. 17 years of Cameron and Ashcroft doesn't bear thinking about.

[LeftishBrit]

7. Oh don't. The thought of another 17 (actually it was 18 IIRC) years of the Tories is too much!

[Hopeless Romantic]

8. This is interesting

http://www.davidosler.com/2009/09/labour_has_lost_a_generation.html

Labour has lost a generation

LISTENING to a group of young people shouting ‘Labour, Labour, Labour; out, out, out’ while marching past Brighton’s conference centre yesterday took me back to when I was the same sort of age. We had a similar chant, you see. But back in the 1980s, the slogan was aimed at Maggie.

Instantly recognisable was the intensity of the hate on display, which was clearly of the kind that will last a lifetime. My twentysomething animosity to the Conservatives has been enough to secure decades of commitment to the far left, and I don’t doubt that a whole layer of students, young workers and a million or so NEETs in 2009 are in pretty much the same frame of mind about the party of which I am a member.

I’m assuming, if only from what I overhear apolitical workmates in a similar age bracket say, that this mood is generalised and not confined to the radical elements that each successive decade inevitably throws up.

And frankly, New Labour might just as well have striven actively to cultivate the contempt of the young, as evidenced by everything imaginable from tuition fees to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the parliamentary expenses scandal.

Not trying to cause a big sensation. Just talking ‘bout their generation. If I still looked good in tight jeans and didn’t have to comb my hair in unusual directions to hide the bald spots, I’m sure I’d feel the same way too.

Any defence, justification or spurious apologetics for Labour I can offer – from the national minimum wage to my inimitable old git reminiscences of just how nasty Conservative government truly can be - are going to have little impact on people who were schoolkids 12 years ago.

For instance, I remember telling a keen teenage fan of house music how the Conservatives once tried to ban ‘repetitive beats’. He clearly found the idea amusing, but I doubt that the revelation is going to change the way he votes.

In recent posts I have detailed how New Labour has lost the north, and pointed to analysis that suggests it will be wiped out in Wales. For good measure, let me highlight this Evening Standard poll, which indicates that 17 of its 44 seats in London are set to go.

To lose regions such as this – the historic cradles of Labourism – is of course calamitous, but not necessarily irreversible. Lose an entire age group, on the other hand, and you can kiss government goodbye until another one comes of age. See you in a quarter of a century.

[T_i_B]

9. I don't think it's just Labour

All parties seem to have decided that young voters are a much, much lower priority then elderly ones as the old folks are more likely to turn up on polling day. The problem is not confined to Labour. Give any of the 3 main parties a shot at running the country and they will all end up in the same position because none of them are even interested in inspiring the young in the first place.

The only young people who are interested in joining political parties are those who leave school wanting a career in politics in the first place.