The Labour Party: Shafted, but not dead

This is something you don’t see often – rats running not just towards a sinking ship, but actively looking to captain it. If you are at all cynical (and I am – sometimes I think it is my defining feature) then you would wonder why on earth anyone would want to lead the party that is incapable of retaining their third safest seat and can boast the like of Terry “I’m A Socialist Moron” Kelly as not just a member but key cheerleader. On paper, it is a lot like becoming leader of the Soviet Communist Party. Or winning the job of guitarist in Deep Purple 30 years after they were last worth listening to.

But then again, is being the Scottish Labour leader really such a bad deal? Yeah, you’ve not going to do well in the near future. But if you can hang on – perhaps by using radical means such as not accepting illegal donations – then maybe you can slowly bring about the resurrection of the once dominant force in Scottish politics.

The same is true of the Labour party at the moment. One of the reasons why the Brown administration is still dragging on is because no-one really wants the job. I mean, what politician actively wants to lead their party to electoral defeat? But then again, defeat is now so certain that a new leader could win a strong reputation by minimising the extent of the coming disaster, and rebuild the party slowly but surely. It is not a dream job for anyone – make no mistake about that. But equally it is not the worst job in the world – it has potential, if you make the best of it.

Because, whilst Labour is in a bad state, it certainly isn’t a terminal case. As much as I would like to be predicting the glorious end of this dismal political party, it just isn’t going to happen. They will lose the next election, but not be wiped out.

There are several reasons for this:

Gordon will go

The Labour party has shown a real appetite for regicide in history, but equally they have never really been this unpopular before. They are swimming in uncharted waters, and they will want someone to blame for their current woes. Brown is the obvious candidate, not least because he is the one responsible for the disaster the Labour party is enduring.

So the party’s senior politicians may pull their finger out of their arseholes and go to Gordon, tell him to go, and then sack him when he refuses. A new leader would almost certainly be better for the party’s fortunes – even Harman would be preferable for the party than the execrable Brown. The party is full of talentless shits, true, but no-one is shitter than the man who clawed his way to the top of that tree. A new leader before the election could save the party from a 1997 style electoral wipe out.

And if they decide that Brown is the best option to take them into the next election (which would be a lot like the Titanic stating that it really like icebergs and thinks they are the way forward) he will last roughly five hours after the election results come in and Cameron becomes Prime Minister. Brown’s time as Labour leader is finite – it isn’t a case of “if he gets binned”, much more of “when he gets binned.” And once the cuntiest cunt of the party brimming over with cunts falls, someone more capable (even the aforementioned twat Terry Kelly would struggle to do a worst job) will take over.

It took four Tory leaders and well over a decade for the Conservative party to tear themselves from the electoral doldrums. It may take Labour a similar amount of time and heartbreak to so the same thing. But at some point they will turn it around, and become a credible political force once again.

Cameron isn’t good enough

Seriously, he isn’t. He lacks the killer instinct to truly fuck the Labour party. He performs ok at PMQs, he is riding high in the polls. But, as I have said time and again, that is not about who he is, but rather who he isn’t. Just as Blair pulled off a stunning victory in 1997 by simply not being John Major, so Cameron will almost certainly trounce Labour at the next election for not being Gordon Brown. You can argue that winning is everything in politics, but some victories are certainly more hollow than others. I’d argue (and some will no doubt disagree) that I am more popular than Peter Sutcliffe and Gary Glitter. But I don’t put that meaningless achievement on my CV.

A ruthless Tory leader would be looking beyond just winning the next election. They’d be looking to slash the throat of the Labour party once and for all, and leave the fetid corpse of that out dated and ideologically bankrupt party to slowly rot away to nothing. However Cameron, both instinctively and in terms of competence, is not able to do that.

Clegg isn’t good enough

One of the startling things about the woes of the current Labour party is that the Liberal Democrats are not capitalising on the governments numerous failings. In fact, it is difficult to know exactly what the Liberal Democrats are doing these days. They are faced with a Labour party that has been utterly discredited and a Tory leader with all the ideological gravitas and political experience of a toddler. They should be relishing this moment, and going in for the kill. Instead, they seem to be hiding underneath a big rock doing, precisely, nothing.

Clegg has some half-decent proposals, but seems incapable of getting himself into the media spotlight with those proposals. He has all the media savvy of a cucumber. For a party that is reliant on the leader being able to steal column inches and get onto the news, Clegg was a poor choice. And the Liberal Democrats are now paying for that. At a time when they should be pushing towards their breakthrough moment and become the second party in this country, they are actually stagnating. Their big moment will pass straight by them, and they will be left nursing broken dreams and wondering, now and forever, “What if…”

Barring miracles (if you can call something really shitty happening a miracle) Labour will lose the next election. Right-wingers, and right minded people, can and should relish this moment. And they can look forward to dancing on the (political) grave of Gordon Brown. But it is wrong and naïve to write Labour off forever. With the tedious regularity and determination of a Terminator, they’ll find a way. They’ll be back.