However, the story isn’t that anyone has done particularly well; it is that Labour has done badly.

Oh yeah, because electing two fascist MP’s doesn’t reflect badly on Labour at all…

head in sand time, me thinks.

Or maybe the vote is “a consequence of how British people think and behave!” Come on Charlieman! Surely sensible and correct British people couldn’t do this!? It wasn’t the BNP that declared a war on Islam. It wasn’t the BNP that continually ignored the ethnic composition of their union delegates in the North West and Yorkshire. It was Jack Straw, and not the BNP, who made a fuss about talking to Islamic women wearing veils in his surgery in Blackburn. The racism which is rife in the North West and Yorkshire has been painfully evident at least since I was going to school in Lancashire but as long as people kept voting Labour it was hypocritiically convenient to pretend that nothing was wrong.
Roughly a decade ago a Mauritian friend of mine and her daughter found thamselves moving from South London to Preston and what a culture shock! She might as well have been living in pre-Martin Luther King Alabama!

A piss poor showing from Labour – and deservedly so. Apalling that their support swung to the BNP though: the BNP capitalizing in anti-Labour feeling, as expected.

But where the hell were the LibDems? They came off relatively well in the expenses scandal. This election should have been theirs; at the very least they should be the ones to put Labour into third place.

#3 Nino

“Roughly a decade ago a Mauritian friend of mine and her daughter found thamselves moving from South London to Preston and what a culture shock! She might as well have been living in pre-Martin Luther King Alabama!”

What a load of tosh!

Will that be the Preston that regularly ignores the BNP and votes a socialist on to the local council? Hmm, I’m sure there are many areas of the country that have issues with racism but to paint the picture you do is just plain wrong. Preston has a relatively integrated community.
I mean, it might be stuck out there in the northern wastelands compared to that there cosmopolitain London but Preston is far from redneck hicksville country! What planet are you living on?!

Can I remind you that the BNP only got 8.0% in the entire North West region last night. There are councils that have had the BNP voted on to them. Preston isn’t one of them.

“the results are bad”

Bad? BAD?! They were absolutely catastrophic!!! Losing Wales for the first time ever, 15.3% of the vote – this is so far beyond “bad”. Clearly Labour need to pull themselves together but, as Lord Falconer said yesterday, it is highly unlikely that Brown is capable of achieving this.

A metaphor well known to drinkers is ‘bottom of the barrel’ – surely this is Brown’s bottom of the barrel moment?

It really is time he stopped supping.

A better drinking analogy would be ‘slops’.

If you don’t, all the focus will be on our internal problems and not on the policies we are implementing and we are proposing.

Good. The electorate could not really have made it much clearer that they do not want Labour policies to be proposed or implemented any more.

“shame that their support swung to the BNP though”

It didn’t. The same idiots who voted BNP last time voted BNP this time (absolute BNP vote was down); rather, the people who voted Labour last time stayed home this time.

“The electorate could not really have made it much clearer that they do not want Labour policies to be proposed or implemented any more.”

That’s obviously bollocks – a poor election result doesn’t tell you the split between “we don’t like your policies”, “we think you’re an awful bunch of crooks, even though we don’t mind your policies”, and “we’re just terribly bored with the whole shower of politicos of all hues”.

I’ll put a small bet, the Tories will walk the next election, then people can say ah no that means nothing. it was not us it was them.

Well since the Labour share fell sharply while Tory and LD shares held up, I’m not sure how #9 is wrong?

That’s obviously bollocks -

It wasn’t a “poor” result for Labour; it was an unmitigated disaster. It was appalling. Its nearest precedent was pre-war. And I mean the 1914-18 war….

Taking your three options, the last is disproved by #13 above, who has posted my exact thoughts. The first two both boil down to not wanting Labour to be proposing or implementiong their policies any more.