Labour MPs - remember Canada!
Public
Labour MPs - some of them, at any rate - seem at last to be understanding that they are facing a landslide defeat at the next general election, although they still don't seem to be inclined to try to do anything much to stop it. (Hint: electing an insane right-wing lunatic ultra-Blairite like Alan Milburn as leader would be even worse than keeping Gordon Brown. Yes, that bad.) It really does feel very much like John Major's government's dying days.
However, I get the impression that the most extreme defeat said Labour MPs can contemplate in 2010 would be something along the lines of the 1997 landslide that booted out the Tories. They're probably right... but they shouldn't assume that it couldn't be much, much worse. There is a fairly recent example of a party of government in a Westminster-style parliament, elected under first-past-the-post, being effectively destroyed for ever, at least without a painful merger with another party.
In the 1988 Canadian federal election, the Progressive Conservatives won 169 of the House of Commons' 295 seats and took 43% of the popular vote. Five years later, that 169 became two. Yes, two. The PCs' share of the vote collapsed to 16%. Translating that to Britain in 2010 (when the Commons will have 650 seats) we find that Labour would hold at most five constituencies. They would be about the same size as Plaid Cymru, and far smaller than either the Lib Dems or the SNP.
The Progressive Conservatives struggled on for two more elections, recovering slightly to 20 MPs in 1997 and 12 in 2000, but the game was up, and they merged into the Conservative Party that exists today. Yes, those Tories are now in government in Ottawa, but not in their original form. Of course I know that the Canadian and British political climates were and are different, but it's not my purpose here to analyse those comparisons.
The point is the one I made at the start: Labour cannot assume that the 209 MPs it won in 1983 will be its all-time low water mark. It can't even be sure it won't fall below the 164 MPs the Tories won in 1997. Although unlikely (partly because of the Lib Dems' ineffectualness recently) it is not impossible that they could lose their status as the main Opposition in two years' time, and disappear for decades as the Liberals did in the mid-20th century.
Gordon Brown could go down as not only among the worst Labour leaders of all time, but even as the man who led them out of government, not only for a political generation but for ever. I don't think that is likely, but nor is it absurd. It's that serious.
Labour MPs - some of them, at any rate - seem at last to be understanding that they are facing a landslide defeat at the next general election, although they still don't seem to be inclined to try to do anything much to stop it. (Hint: electing an insane right-wing lunatic ultra-Blairite like Alan Milburn as leader would be even worse than keeping Gordon Brown. Yes, that bad.) It really does feel very much like John Major's government's dying days.
However, I get the impression that the most extreme defeat said Labour MPs can contemplate in 2010 would be something along the lines of the 1997 landslide that booted out the Tories. They're probably right... but they shouldn't assume that it couldn't be much, much worse. There is a fairly recent example of a party of government in a Westminster-style parliament, elected under first-past-the-post, being effectively destroyed for ever, at least without a painful merger with another party.
In the 1988 Canadian federal election, the Progressive Conservatives won 169 of the House of Commons' 295 seats and took 43% of the popular vote. Five years later, that 169 became two. Yes, two. The PCs' share of the vote collapsed to 16%. Translating that to Britain in 2010 (when the Commons will have 650 seats) we find that Labour would hold at most five constituencies. They would be about the same size as Plaid Cymru, and far smaller than either the Lib Dems or the SNP.
The Progressive Conservatives struggled on for two more elections, recovering slightly to 20 MPs in 1997 and 12 in 2000, but the game was up, and they merged into the Conservative Party that exists today. Yes, those Tories are now in government in Ottawa, but not in their original form. Of course I know that the Canadian and British political climates were and are different, but it's not my purpose here to analyse those comparisons.
The point is the one I made at the start: Labour cannot assume that the 209 MPs it won in 1983 will be its all-time low water mark. It can't even be sure it won't fall below the 164 MPs the Tories won in 1997. Although unlikely (partly because of the Lib Dems' ineffectualness recently) it is not impossible that they could lose their status as the main Opposition in two years' time, and disappear for decades as the Liberals did in the mid-20th century.
Gordon Brown could go down as not only among the worst Labour leaders of all time, but even as the man who led them out of government, not only for a political generation but for ever. I don't think that is likely, but nor is it absurd. It's that serious.