Just when Gordon though things couldn’t get any worse… Along came Glasgow East. Last night’s by-election result can only be described as a catastrophe for Gordon Brown. A 22% swing against Labour in their absolute heartland. Brown is now earmarked as a born electoral loser.
Under his leadership, Labour cannot win in their Northern heartlands, they cannot win in their Scottish heartlands and they are humiliatingly trounced in electoral tests elsewhere. Check out this piece by Danny Finkelstein, which summarises the true depth of the gloom for Brown’s Labour. Labour would be electorally suicidal to go into an election with Brown as leader. If the Labour Party has any sense of self preservation they must now realise that under Brown’s leadership they are heading towards potential electoral oblivion.
We must now be preparing to fight an opponent who is not Gordon Brown at the next election. This fight will be much harder, particularly if Labour pick a convincing media performer like Alan Johnson as a replacement. We also need to prepare ourselves to fight a snap general election if Labour do dispense of Brown. I have very little doubt that the disastrous Brown Premiership is now entering its end game and we need to adjust ourselves to that probability.
Two other quick points about the Glasgow East campaign. Firstly, by bringing into stark focus the terrible poverty (actual poverty and poverty of aspiration) in Glasgow East, it has reminded the political classes of New Labour’s failure to tackle poverty in the last ten years and reminded us all that we must prioritise tackling this social dislocation following the next election. The election has reminded us that in certain parts of one of the world’s richest economies there are estates with a lower life expectancy than the Gaza Strip. The forgotten estates should be forgotten no more. Secondly, Glasgow East has shown that we are prepared to campaign with gusto in areas that are not even remotely within Tory territory. We have shown that the modern Conservative message is as applicable to the estates of Glasgow as it is to the rolling fields of Berkshire. There really is no such thing as a no go area for liberal Conservatism. That is a message we should take into the next election.
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