May 14, 2008
Can Labour hold the south?
Charles Clarke, the dissident former home secretary, was fairly loyal last night at a debate held by Progress magazine at (ironic this) the Thatcher Room in Portcullis House. However, Mr Clarke conspicuously failed to answer the question of whether Gordon Brown was the right man to lead Labour into the next election.*
The motion: whether Labour could hold the south.
The most gloomy prognosis was from Peter Kellner, president of YouGov, who said Labour’s notional majority would end with the loss of just 24 seats. Of these, he argued, 17 were ominously south of the line from the Wash to the Severn.
With the public mood about the economy at its most pessimistic for 40 years, said Kellner, the result of the next election depended on how the UK’s finances panned out over the next year.
John Denham, skills secretary, hinted that Gordon Brown should not be blamed for Labour’s situation in the south.
“We lost one and a quarter million votes between 97 and the last general election, (in the south)” he said. “The sort of policy decisions that say this has all happened in the last six months isn’t necessarily the right starting point for Labour’s strategy in the south”.
His recipe for a southern revival sounded - to me anyway - Thatcherite in tone. Labour succeeded in 1997, Denham argued, because it had spoke in general terms about a society it was trying to create.
“A society where it has been possible for people prepared to work hard to see improvements in their lives”….he said….”It was a party that said we have a bias towards those who are prepared to pay their way…we have to tell that story again in a 21st century world.”
* Meanwhile Tamsin Dunwoody, the Labour candidate for the Crewe & Nantwich by-election, was asked three times last night whether Mr Brown was an asset or a liability. She refused to answer the question.
