Best political news I’ve heard for weeks.

Sunny,

This is a marvellous result. I am so bloody happy. The hegemony of a weak left party has been comprehensively demolished by a genuine left party.

It’s just a shame that you can’t vote for them.

End of the Gordo?

Oh,

On the statistics front. Appearances of Gordon Brown – nil.

“We’ll be a nation again”

I’d hope that, in the next week or so, we could have an inclusive society. Not one allied to stupid agenda politics, Such as the Daily Mails’ editorial stance.

Mel Gibson for President!

Honestly, I hoped this would be the result, I just did not expect it.

Comment will naturally focus at first on the implications for Labour. In the short term it means of course the Party will lose any further by-elections it has to defend in this Parliament. Then there will be discussion of personalities – Brown’s, and those of potential replacements. Labour is facing the choice of electoral oblivion under Brown or finding a new leader who (unless he’s John McConnell) happily believed Brown should be elected unopposed when Blair left. It’s rather like being asked to name the animal whose dung is to be thrown in your face.

Remember Labour only took 36% of the vote in 2005 – our voting system could hardly be more Labour-friendly. This is partly due to the “lag” in boundary reviews’ ability to respond to population movements but more to the fact that turnout is always so much lower in safe Labour seats. As has been said (can’t recall the source), Tories vote to elect a Tory government, Labour voters vote to keep the Tories out, so if the local seat isn’t winnable by the Tories a lot of Labour voters apply economic rationality and use their time for something else.

Under Brown, Labour has lost a third of its 2005 vote. Whilst a new leader might be able to exercise some damage limitation, the ceiling is probably 30%. On the other hand there’s no evidence whatsoever that the current poll ratings of around 24% are in fact the floor. As has been said here ad nauseam – because it’s true – there’s no meaningful sense in which Labour to-day are to the left of the Tories. The social democratic agenda which sustained the Party has been consigned to the dustbin of history. The underlying economic and social conditions which made it practical politics no longer apply: I’ve described them before, so I won’t repeat myself. If the Labour Party didn’t exist, no one would invent it, and so it’s very difficult to see how anyone can re-invent it over four or even twenty-four years in opposition.

The Glasgow East result makes a referendum for Scottish independence at some point, almost certainly a year or two into the Cameron government, a racing certainty. The timetable looks a bit like this: Holyrood election May 2011. Can anyone see the SNP going into that election without an explicit promise of a swift Referendum Bill? Can anyone see the SNP losing,; seats at that election with a Tory government in Westminster, the chaos that is the Scottish Labour Party, and the LibDems still tainted by their eight years in bed with Labour? Can anyone imagine a “rainbow” anti-SNP ministry emerging from that election? Can anyone imagine Salmond, whose political skills are head and shoulders above those of any of his contemporaries, not getting his way in the referendum?

Cameron will have no option but to negotiate the break up of Britain. And that also means the break-up of the United Kingdom. What will the Northern Irish do? They seem to be giving it remarkably little thought, if the absence of any discussion of the point on Slugger O’Toole is anything to go by. The cultural links of the Northern Irish Protestants are to Scotland, not England, of course. Buried in the small print of Cameron’s overtures to the UUP for re-amalgamation of their parties is his proper insistence that the subsidies to the province must end – proper, because an English electorate won’t pay them. That is the least of it: the Northern Irish Protestant political psyche is based on there being an Britain for them to unite to – so what happens when there isn’t? The first Ulster Prod to wake up and smell the coffee could make a remarkable career…

Wales I leave till last because it unites the two strands of the Glasgow East story. Plaid Cymru is a party of cultural defence, not of aspiration for political independence. The union of England and Wales is too deep, and Wales too economically intertwined with England, for anything else to be practical politics. And by governing the Principality with a party to its left rather one to its right, the Welsh Labour Party gives itself a chance to produce, as the Tories grind on into their second and third terms at Westminster, a blueprint for “left” politics that reflects 21st century conditions.

It’s only a chance, but if I were an ambitious Welsh thirty year old Labourite, I think I’d be blessing the voters of Glasgow East this morning…

Sorry about the italics. My poor proof-reading.

I hope you are right, Mike. Although it would be a shame for these independent states to gain their independence only to be hoovered up later on by an EU superstate. I think the people of the “United Kingdom” would actually get on an awful lot better as independent nations.

Mike – very interesting.

What in practical terms would Welsh Labour undertake, in terms of governing Wales “from the left”?

Interesting post, Mike K, and for the record I’m on the other side of the political divide. I’d be interested to hear Labour supports’ views on the following:

If we can assume for a second that Labour will lose the next election no matter what, what do you think would be better for the longterm: letting Brown sacrifice himself on a massive Tory landslide in 2009/10 and then using it as a moment of carthesis, change things, take stock, come back with a new leader and try again in 2014ish, or would it be better to stab Brown now and face the next GE with a different leader, but risk facing further chaos and even more leader changes if it doesn’t stop the landslide?

If we can assume for a second that Labour will lose the next election no matter what, what do you think would be better for the longterm: letting Brown sacrifice himself on a massive Tory landslide in 2009/10 and then using it as a moment of carthesis, change things, take stock, come back with a new leader and try again in 2014ish, or would it be better to stab Brown now and face the next GE with a different leader, but risk facing further chaos and even more leader changes if it doesn’t stop the landslide?

The first option essentially means at best the ‘demob happy’ argument (quick! do some good before getting thrown out of office!), at worst waiting for Labour to lose in 2010 (like John Major’s Tories without the jokes). Since New Labour is all about winning, I can’t see this really working.

For the second option to work, Brown would have to go pretty quickly after Glasgow East. it also means the Labour party would have to have the debate about what it stands for and where it wants to go that it should have had last year, if not earlier. It would also have to accept that the field would be wide open (for example, McConnell, Harman (who has to run, otherwise what’s the point of her being deputy?), Balls, Milliband, Purnell, Hutton, Johnson). If the result of that is ‘Blair 2.0′ – i.e. another plausible salesman of neo-liberalism and triangulation – then fine: at least it will be the settled decision of the party. But I don’t reckon they’re brave enough to risk such a contest.

In short, there are no good choices – but they have to make a choice and stick with it.

[7] I claim no particular expertise in the powers of the Welsh Assembly! (I have no connection with the Principality, whereas I do have family and friendship connections with the Six Counties.)

I don’t mean to suggest that the powers of the Welsh Assembly are particularly appropriate for the development of a “beacon” of good contemporary left practice, only that after c. 2012-3 it may well be the part of the country where the political culture is least toxic.

I’ll do a skeleton of an article on where the left might go in general terms economically and let Sunny have sight of it…

“The hegemony of a weak left party has been comprehensively demolished by a genuine left party.”

The SNP is a genune left party? Since when?

The new MP David Mason is an anti-choice, anti-stem cell research, anti-gay religious fundamentalist. Since when are those values of the Left? They are values of the SNPs biggest financial backer, Brian Souter, the man who bankrolled their party at the Scottish elections last year, but they are not the values of a liberal, social democratic party nor the left.

edit: That should of course be John Mason not David Mason. John Mason maybe a fundamentalist but he’s not a serial killer.

The new MP David Mason is an anti-choice, anti-stem cell research, anti-gay religious fundamentalist. Since when are those values of the Left? They are values of the SNPs biggest financial backer, Brian Souter, the man who bankrolled their party at the Scottish elections last year, but they are not the values of a liberal, social democratic party nor the left.

hmmm… good point.

I’m also not convinced the voters didn’t vote Labour to give Brown a bloody nose. Everyone from the area keeps saying there are local issues at play here.

Mike -good analysis. But I’m not convinced by this:

The social democratic agenda which sustained the Party has been consigned to the dustbin of history. The underlying economic and social conditions which made it practical politics no longer apply

Why? are you saying its only possible to now fight for a confused middle ground?

End of the Gordo?

Yep.

[13] Did you get my e-mail,. Sunny?

Mike K @ 4,

That is a superb bit of analysis. So it is.