The Election's Losers: the Labour Party

We've heard a lot about how no-one won the election, and this is largely true. Somehow Cameron managed to not win a majority despite facing a Prime Minister who is beyond unpopular. But that's irrelevant, because he still did better than anyone else. And while Clegg managed to lose seats, he did manage to raise the profile of his party for the first time in his leadership. Neither of those won, but they didn't properly lose either. So, while there were no clear winners in this election, there was a clear loser. The Labour party.

Labour lost this election. They lost 91 seats, while their main rival won 97 seats. They did so badly that they cannot form a majority government even if they manage to get a coalition with the Liberal Democrats. And the Lib Dems are currently ignoring them. Labour got 10% fewer votes and a 27% fewer seats in the House of Commons than last time out. In most other elections, this sort of performance would see a landslide for the opposition.

Yet Labour don't seem to get that they lost. They seem to think that because the Tories haven't been able to form a government quite yet that all the parties are in the same position. They also seem to think that the fact that their man still being Prime Minister gives them some form of legitimacy, rather than realising the reality - that Gordon Brown's ongoing Premiership is down to a quirk of an unwritten constitution. They seem to be hoping against hope that something will happen to save them, rather than realising it is pretty much all over bar the leadership contest.

So the message to the Labour Party is that you lost. You lost badly. And the sooner you get that clear in your heads, the sooner you can move on. Because if anything, you are one step behind where the Tories were when they lost in 1997. They were in shock, you're still in denial. And you need to get over your defeat, and move on.