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Gordon Brown's Meltdown

It was a strange night for politics in Britain, and a sad one. The EU election results are Labour's poorest since 1918 (beaten in Wales and Scotland, with far-right parties getting a toehold), with less than 16% of the popular vote. Eyewear feels the only way forward for Labour is radical and dramatic renewal, instigated by drastic change at the top. That this likely won't happen only redoubles the Labour tragedy - and the potential destruction of the party for a generation is a tragedy - and it likely won't because a) Brown is stubborn enough to cling to power until next May and b) his peers and MPs seem so demoralised and/or craven as to resist the bold steps necessary. This means Labour is dead on its feet - like someone stuck at the edge of a diving board, shivering, unable and unwilling to climb down or make the leap. It seems obvious that any leader would be better, since Brown cannot communicate with human warmth and will never win voters around now. Someone else just might find a bit of that Obama spark. Meanwhile, the right is gaining ground in Britain, and looks set - in more or less acceptable forms - to be driving the agenda for the next decade (much as they have this decade, anyway). What a mess Blair and Brown - that unfunny duo - have got us into this time. But then, since at least 2003, they've been abandoning all of Labour's core values simply to curry favour, anyway.
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The Editors said…
Depressing, certainly, but not as depressing as it could have been. The fact that the SNP gained a great deal of ground from Labour in Scotland suggests that where there is a viable, centre-left alternative to the increasingly-beleaguered Labour party, the voters favour it over the demagogic right. If the BNP gained ground in the north, it's not due to a groundswell in support - their share of the vote didn't really rise in comparison to 2004 - but because protest votes against Labour were split among the other parties, allowing the far right to slip in by the back gate, as it were. It's certainly a tragedy, of course, but not the electoral coup which the far right are painting it as.

On the plus side, too, some years in the wilderness might well have a galvanising effect upon the Labour party. At the moment, I'm not sure if a new leader would solve the problems in the party, or assuage public dissatisfaction with how the government's been operating, but a few years down the line a British answer to Obama could be a very liklely possibility, and an exciting one.

Simon Turner, Gists and Piths
Mon Jun 08, 06:24:00 pm 2009
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