Only yesterday I gave some, if I say so myself, very good ideas for Labour to try and turn around their faltering ship and possibly pull off an unlikely election victory.
On the eve of the last Party Conference before the election, they have some rallying to do. However, apparently the News of the World has found just over 1,000 people somewhere, probably who do not read the news or live on this planet, 48% of whom give Brown a 'slim chance' of winning the election while another 11% are more unreserved, and perhaps crackers, in saying Labour will win.
The one piece of advice I failed to give yesterday is that Labour should not delude themselves. While such polls will give a straw with which they can clutch on, the last thing they need to do is to trivialise the task they have ahead of them, because if they truly believe that they can win the election from the current position they are in without a radical change in their approach, then we are talking a landslide to the Tories at minimum.
Mandy has rallied the troops - and he will be lurking in the corridors of conference bashing anyone who starts to talk of ditching the past and looking to the future. On that score, the Millibands, Ed and Dave, are both in line for slaps on the wrist with Mandy's wet Sunday Times (he reads nothing else as he is such good friends with the Murdochs) as they have already started gloom-mongering with speeches about how the party must now 'look to the future' - a known political euphemism for 'we've lost so let's have a leadership election and my name is in the hat.'
Mandy himself has shrewdly said that this election is 'not in the bag - either for us or the Tories'. He can congratulate himself for being at least 50% right with that statement but one thing he must realise also will be that the next few months, weeks even, may well hand the election to the Tories. And that's another matter than trying to rally his team to try and win. Literally, if ministers persist in trying to lie about the next steps based on the position we are in today, then Labour lose by handing the election to the Tories. What I mean by that is that Cameron really doesn't have a policy to think of, and yet he could still win the election simply by Labour handing it to him. In many respects, that could the worst thing that could happen.
But it would be easy to do, particularly if Labour start to believe their own rhetoric and do little to change the public's perception. In fact, if they believe their own bull too much, then they will probably do nothing and their arrogance will get them voted out.
A prime example of this is that Darling has talked of making a legal pledge to halve the debt by 2015. A LEGAL pledge - this is not his word, best endeavours or anything else, but this a pledge that essentially we could all sue him for. How daft is that kind of idiot behaviour? Given his current inability to work out the numbers from one month to the next, not only is he suddenly going to get a grip on his calculator but Britain will now emerge from recession like an Exocet and grow like topsy.
Why must that happen? Because in the same breath, his fearless leader is actually saying that his party will not make cuts in services - in fact, he has implied they will continue to invest. You do not have to be a genius to work out that if unemployment will peak in 2010, then less than 5 years later, we will have halved debt. All estimates by learned and quite sane economists say that by 2014 we will have DOUBLED debt from today's current position to almost 99% of GDP. Is Darling expecting us to believe that by a year later he will have performed a conjuring trick worthy of Gordon's namesake or David Copperfield and made our debt disappear like a rabbit in a top hat?
The answer lies in Labour electioneering. It appears that there will be a series of equivocal statements designed to cleverly say things which mean at least two things. The hand of Mandelson is very much in evidence as only he could be so damn devious and think he could get away with that as he has done many times before.
The tragedy is that it looks that rather than being honest with the electorate to get us all behind what needs to be done, we are going to be played for fools once again. I think that is a terrible mistake for as stupid as we undoubtedly are, we are fully aware of how dire the situation is. Wishful thinking and forlorn battle cries based around ambiguous statements will not fool s this time.
The one piece of advice I failed to give yesterday is that Labour should not delude themselves. While such polls will give a straw with which they can clutch on, the last thing they need to do is to trivialise the task they have ahead of them, because if they truly believe that they can win the election from the current position they are in without a radical change in their approach, then we are talking a landslide to the Tories at minimum.
Mandy has rallied the troops - and he will be lurking in the corridors of conference bashing anyone who starts to talk of ditching the past and looking to the future. On that score, the Millibands, Ed and Dave, are both in line for slaps on the wrist with Mandy's wet Sunday Times (he reads nothing else as he is such good friends with the Murdochs) as they have already started gloom-mongering with speeches about how the party must now 'look to the future' - a known political euphemism for 'we've lost so let's have a leadership election and my name is in the hat.'
Mandy himself has shrewdly said that this election is 'not in the bag - either for us or the Tories'. He can congratulate himself for being at least 50% right with that statement but one thing he must realise also will be that the next few months, weeks even, may well hand the election to the Tories. And that's another matter than trying to rally his team to try and win. Literally, if ministers persist in trying to lie about the next steps based on the position we are in today, then Labour lose by handing the election to the Tories. What I mean by that is that Cameron really doesn't have a policy to think of, and yet he could still win the election simply by Labour handing it to him. In many respects, that could the worst thing that could happen.
But it would be easy to do, particularly if Labour start to believe their own rhetoric and do little to change the public's perception. In fact, if they believe their own bull too much, then they will probably do nothing and their arrogance will get them voted out.
A prime example of this is that Darling has talked of making a legal pledge to halve the debt by 2015. A LEGAL pledge - this is not his word, best endeavours or anything else, but this a pledge that essentially we could all sue him for. How daft is that kind of idiot behaviour? Given his current inability to work out the numbers from one month to the next, not only is he suddenly going to get a grip on his calculator but Britain will now emerge from recession like an Exocet and grow like topsy.
Why must that happen? Because in the same breath, his fearless leader is actually saying that his party will not make cuts in services - in fact, he has implied they will continue to invest. You do not have to be a genius to work out that if unemployment will peak in 2010, then less than 5 years later, we will have halved debt. All estimates by learned and quite sane economists say that by 2014 we will have DOUBLED debt from today's current position to almost 99% of GDP. Is Darling expecting us to believe that by a year later he will have performed a conjuring trick worthy of Gordon's namesake or David Copperfield and made our debt disappear like a rabbit in a top hat?
The answer lies in Labour electioneering. It appears that there will be a series of equivocal statements designed to cleverly say things which mean at least two things. The hand of Mandelson is very much in evidence as only he could be so damn devious and think he could get away with that as he has done many times before.
The tragedy is that it looks that rather than being honest with the electorate to get us all behind what needs to be done, we are going to be played for fools once again. I think that is a terrible mistake for as stupid as we undoubtedly are, we are fully aware of how dire the situation is. Wishful thinking and forlorn battle cries based around ambiguous statements will not fool s this time.
But wait a minute. The clouds in Cuckooland are gathering. Maybe we are that stupid after all. We'll see.
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