The #welovetheNHS campaign was never going to win swing voters over – I’m sure it did motivate our base and increase their likelihood of voting. That’s just as important as winning over swing voters.

Alan Johnson doesn’t have the power to depose GB: it’s up to Brown whether he stays or goes. The Blairites have tried most things to try and force his hand and nothing has worked. So I say again, all you are doing here is focussing on process stories/leadership speculation, rather than on issues. You’re doing the Tories’ work for them.

It’s not just that he is unable to lead it is that he has been shown to be a liar, incompetent, cowardly, arrogant etc., etc.

People now see what a fundamentally unpleasant person he is and just won’t vote for someone so astonishingly aweful.

Quite right. Sadly, Labour’s strategy for government: issue a press release, and consider the problem solved. Never mind the reality. It’s government by spin, by marketing, by media stunt – all image and no ground-level reality. A clique of people living in a hall of mirrors in Westminster, increasingly dissociated from the real world. Meanwhile, in the real world, things just get worse. Labour’s social and economic policy today is all about papering over cracks and hoping they don’t show. Don’t rock the boat, do what the City tells you.

And the worse thing? The immoral and profligate PFI, which has mortgaged our future, ripped us off by billions, and tied us into crummy, cheap-and-nasty services and physical infrastructure for the next 30 years. And why? So that Gordon Brown could fiddle the figures for national debt. Again, government by illusion.

The threat is people might vote for someone they think will do something real and effective (but nasty) at street level.

If you want a coherent programme of reform, isn’t the obvious alternative to Brown one Nick Clegg? He seems to have considerably more voter appeal too.

It is quite noticeable how the gender issue rests though. It seems that women voters switched off to Gordon long before he was Prime Minister, whilst more chaps were willing to give him a fair crack – maybe because we hated Blair. It is deeply problematic for them. I can’t help thinking that whenever Mandleson appears on telly that’s another 1,000 votes gone. It has to be Johnson – it just makes no sense other than vanity to not get him in.

The ideal result for the Tories would be for Gordon Brown to remain as leader right up until May next year, harried all the way by discontents and anxious back-benchers. The political status quo – the 41;27;17 position that Sunny cites – is ideal for the Tories. Unless a major game-changing event happens the Tories are home and dry.

Would a change of leader do it? Maybe, but with a couple of big caveats. The first is that Brown will have to decide to go himself. There really isn’t the formal mechanism to force him out. The cabinet (by which I probably mean D Miliband and Darling) will have to threaten to resign unless he does. And then there really has to be a coronation, and not a leadership election. The last thing Labour want is a two month period of introspection and back-biting, with the Tories and the media pointing out that the country is rudderless, that this sort of navel-gazing is ruinously self-indulgent, that a general election is due in six months, so why not just call it and then rebuild in opposition etc.

But the chances of an uncontested coronation aren’t great – would Miliband really put his career on the line for no reward? Would Harman really row in behind Alan Johnson? Plus, the last time there was a Labour leadership election was 1994 – can you chaps really get away with another coronation? Remind me, how did the last one turn out?

I suspect therefore, that it’s more likely that Brown will hang on to power by his shredded fingernails. But lets pretend that there is a coronation, and that Alan Johnson takes over. Is there any evidence to suggest that he’d be any better really? Where would it leave ‘no time for a novice’? Johnson has had absolutely no experience of an economic portfolio. He is being bigged up largely because he looks less weird than Gordon Brown, but is that really enough to be Prime Minister?

The time to have all these debates was last summer (ideally, in fact, in 2007 but no-one wanted to challenge Gordon). You’ve just run out of road.

I do agree, but is it possible you could be missing the point of the research? I’m not sure on what grounds you’d suggest that “women are switching off for the same reason men are“, when the finding is that Labour is putting considerably more women off than men (presumably to a degree that is greater than what you’d expect by chance). The finding suggests that something about Labour is putting more women off than men – the implication being that the reason for switching off is either different between the genders, or having a notably different effect on the genders. From the point of view of the political establishment, it’s surely worth wondering what that reason might be, and looking at the policies seems a perfectly sensible point to start.

For this particular woman, it’s nothing to do with being tired of this government, and everything to do with the gap between the spin and the reality. Why would you want to listen to the promises of a bunch of self-serving manipulative liars, whose real intention seems to be to screw the most vulnerable and send this country to hell in a hand-cart for their own personal gain?

Could the gender gap have something to do with the fact that women make up a greater proportion of those in part-time and low-paid employment, a greater proportion of those responsible for childcare (in all aspects), and consequently a greater proportion of those who are or feel vulnerable to the effects of the shoddy and shameful performance of this labour government?

I think this post author should start listening to women as well, instead of ignoring what the evidence suggests, to push zir own personal agenda.

Spot on analysis, I reckon. Rowenna’s piece was good too. I don’t think it’s impossible for both of you to be somewhat right, that the overall problem is exactly as you suggest, but within that, Rowenna is right that some numbers of women do hold specific opinions about waste and bureaucracy that relate to their own experiences, and might well tend to be impatient of public services for that reason. I certainly am. And I suppose, if I had no intellectual imagination or core principles of my own or, indeed, grip on reality, it might well make me vote Tory.

Oh, and Dick has it right on the Mandelson front.

Incidentally, to everyone rightly mentioning spin above, go and read Sally Gimson’s piece. It’s hilarious. She actually ends up calling for the Labour party to spin more effectively to women. She’ll fit right in in the Labour parliamentary party, she will.

@ Tim J, no .6

Actually, I am pretty convinced that a full-blooded leadership battle at this stage would be incredibly invigorating for the Labour Party. I actually can’t think of anything better for recapturing the public imagination, and regaining the media spotlight for reasons having to do with ideas and debate about future direction of the party, rather than Brown’s latest disasters, which is where they are now. Even if it were a real blood-letting, it would be good for the party. And Tory calls for an immediate election would not get them anywhere. The electorate like to know what their options are: they would be happy to let a leadership contest play out fully, rather than have a snap election before the government had had chance to set out its post-Brown stall. And it would be easy to assign someone with no leadership ambitions as a caretaker (Mandelson, probably) whilst the contest happens to counter accusations that there’s no one in charge.

11 – There’s no precedent for a contested leadership election in a major part (in opposition, let alone in government) this close to a general election, so this is all speculation, but I’d have thought that it ran the risk of dividing the Labour Party in a particuarly public fashion shortly before an election. Alan Johnson, though he might stand a chance of a coronation, would surely struggle to win a clear majority in a leadership election (he lost the deputy leadership to Harriet Harman – who would surely stand in any election now) leaving the attack of ‘Johnson can’t even command the support of [a third/nearly a half] of his own MPs, why on earth should he get the support of the electorate.

Plus, it allows the media and the Tories to highlight all the inter-part attacks, all the ‘things we (he/she) did wrong in Government), all the coded messages trying to win the support of the Unions, all the little ‘trust me I’m Old Labour’ signals – and all at a time when there would be massive scrutiny on the process. A better example of washing your dirty linen in public can hardly be imagined.

As a further point, there is such an atmosphere of fatalism in the Labour Party now that you can’t discount them doing something utterly suicidal, like making the final choice between Ed Balls and Harriet Harman.

And I really don’t think the country would appreciate a genuinely unelected Prime Minister – let alone one like Lord Mandelson…

Clearly the way to win back women voters is to make Harriet Harman leader.

Correct that Brown should go, but everyone else is right, it’s far too late.

But what a load of crap about Alan Johnson. It’s comedy stuff. Nobody knows him, activists are just projecting onto him.

Mandelson is running the show in the last days – it’s like Nixon and Kissinger at the very end. He’s the last architect of New Labour left standing, so let him be the PM.

Labour to go into the election with a creepy unelected Lord at the helm, who is intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich at our expense, and carves up the country every time he goes on holiday to Corfu. It scripts perfectly.

@Strategist – take it you don’t plan for the Labour Party! That Sir/Madam would be madness, madness I tells yee, madness. I think the Johnson shouts whilst undoubtedly projected are because he comes across as ‘a pretty straight kind of guy’…..i’ll get my coat.

So I say again, all you are doing here is focussing on process stories/leadership speculation, rather than on issues. You’re doing the Tories’ work for them.

I’m not sure how many times I have to keep saying this tim – the issues don’t matter right now. As for doing the Tories’ work for them, I’m trying to discuss strategy to keep a Tory majority down. Frankly, the Labour party can ignore or listen, but what I say isn’t likely to impact voting intentions nationally, is it?

isn’t the obvious alternative to Brown one Nick Clegg? He seems to have considerably more voter appeal too.

The voters don’t seem to think so. The Libdems are sti, sadly, 10% behind a deeply unpopular Labour govt. Clegg needs to pull something big out of his hat because otherwise it looks like their support has plateaued.

And I really don’t think the country would appreciate a genuinely unelected Prime Minister – let alone one like Lord Mandelson…

That’s why a new leader would have to call an election near immediately. But that’s fine, still gives him/her a window of opportunity.

But what a load of crap about Alan Johnson. It’s comedy stuff. Nobody knows him, activists are just projecting onto him.

Perhaps, but he’s genuinely a nice, affable guy who comes across well in the media (I feel). And besides, voters didn’t know G Brown before he became PM. No difference.

Good points, but I’ve got two problems with this article (which, I might also add, is rather “predictable” coming from Sunny!)

Firstly, your point that “everyone is too far gone” doesn’t really deal with the gender divide in the poll, which says that women are more disillusioned with Labour than men.

You might say “It doesn’t matter, voters of both sexes are all lost anyway” but I think that’s a bit insulting to the electorate. I get the feeling that when you think voters you don’t think human beings, you think moronic herding mass. Do you really think that after a certain point people can’t change their attitudes in response to changes in policy?

Fair enough, Labour might not have time to gain back enough trust in the next few months to actually *win* the general election, but that doesn’t mean that what they do now won’t change the margin by which they lose by. But reading your article, you’d think the whole outcome was static and Labour should just throw in the towel. That doesn’t help the left – it just helps the Tories.

Sunny, I’m sorry but I think you’re being far too optimistic. There is no window of opportunity, mostly because Brown is not going anywhere but more importantly Johnson wouldn’t have a window because people can’t be duped into seeing a change in a party twice and Labour already performed that trick when Brown was installed. There can’t be a sudden major shift from the Labour party because they’re in government and you can’t change the systems of government quickly. Any announcement would be met with questions about how long it was going to take and then the party would be shot down again. They can’t make policy promises because they have the power to carry them through now and any reason is dismissed as an excuse. It’s just not workable, your idea is the best way to tar Johnson with the same brush as Gordon Brown.

Labour have simply been in power for too long and their electoral cycle is concluding. I think we’re all going to have to brace ourselves for a crash landing. Additionally I just want to say that I think the party are damn lucky to have Mandelson around at the moment because I get the impression he’s keeping a lid on a lot of the in-fighting and frankly there’s no better way to kick start descent into the wilderness than a load of politicians publicly beating each other up despite being in the same political party.

… incidentally the depths of my brain are sure they’ve encountered a statistic in the last decade or so that said women usually make up a higher proportion of the conservative vote? Am I wrong about that?

“what I say isn’t likely to impact voting intentions nationally, is it?”

Why say it, if you don’t believe it will have any effect? It’s certainly not going to have an effect on Gordon Brown, who’s in a constituency of one in terms of deciding whether Gordon Brown stands down or not.

It might not have a direct effect on the electorate – undecided voters may not be reading Liberal Conspiracy to make their minds up on how to vote – but it still has an effect.

@ Tim J, no 12:

I literally do not think that any of the scenarios you describe are worse than the present state of affairs.* The difference is between one in which prominent figures are giving their ideas for the future, and one in which they are doing frankly nothing. To repeat, even a blood-letting is better than this. That is because what there is now is the (accurate) impression of inertia. In addition, you yourself show what is to be gained when you say that there would be ‘massive scrutiny of the process’. Right now, as Sunny correctly points out, where the government is concerned there is scrutiny of fuck all – nobody (amongst the electorate) is listening to anything Labour has to say.

*With the exception of the Balls/Harman face-off. But it’s not a reason not to have a contest that it might end up like this. A leadership election gives the party an opportunity to revive itself. It’s not an argument not to have one that, if given it, they might still blow it.

21 – I actually agree with that. The problem is that Labour MPs hesitating on the brink will see all the potential problems inherent in a defenestration and give way to the sort of despairing apathy that they’re in now.

‘Is it really worth all the angst and fighting, after all we’re going to lose anyway…’

@ 22:

Yes, but that is a question about whether they will, rather than about whether they should, chuck Brown. I think your quote sums up accurately how many, if not most Labour MPs are thinking. Partly for that reason, I have thought for some time (and have finally got around to writing today) that the left needs to adopt a different approach from now on in agitating for a leadership contest. The claim ought to be that Labour has a moral responsibility to those who would be harmed by a Tory government to ditch Brown, and fight back. The predominant view that this is just an internal issue for the party, and Labour is only hurting itself if it continues to wallow in lethargy between now and an election, needs to be overcome. Labour MPs need to be disabused of the fiction that they aren’t obligated to anyone else but themselves to try and stay in government.

Sunny:

The only hope is that someone deposes of Brown, say like Alan Johnson, and calls for an election early next year.

Have you been talking to Toynbee recently? She persisted with the idea that Johnson – that cross between Postman Pat and Little Orphan Annie – was just the person to woo the electorate/minimise a defeat…right up until Johnson chose to be Home Secretary instead. The would-be assassins had their chance in the fallout from the local and Euro elections – and look what a stuff-up they made of that. Their latest cunning plan seems to involve getting someone who doesn’t like Brown into a party post no-one else cares about in the hope that that this time, honestly, Brown will really take the hint and just FOAD— sorry, I mean resign. I’m bored with the briefings to pet scribes in the media about how, this time, they really will get their man, in the manner of a bunch of useless wannabe supervillains. Either the plotters have the required number of signatures and a candidate to force a contest, or they don’t – and if it’s the latter they might as well shut up because they’re stuck with Brown whatever happens. Sunny, with respect, you can keep asking for Brown to go until you’re blue in the face (and I don’t blame you for doing so), but it’s clear the party either can’t or won’t organise to make it happen, and isn’t prepared to have the kind of leadership contest it should have had in 2007. They – and you, and everyone else – are stuck. Maybe hope is just the last thing to die.

Rowenna, point taken about women polling less – but I’m not convinced its because the party doesn’t have the policies. My feeling is that the macho culture, and the villification of Harriet Harman / Caroline Flint had more to do with it. Either way, I think policies matter for squat in this case.

Do you really think that after a certain point people can’t change their attitudes in response to changes in policy?

Yes. And it would take something massive to change that emotional association. Just announcing a few policies here and there, that the vast majority of people won’t hear of, will not make much difference.

But reading your article, you’d think the whole outcome was static and Labour should just throw in the towel. That doesn’t help the left – it just helps the Tories.

No, I think the only hope they have now is to change the leader and then come up with a renewed plan. Gordon Brown is dead weight.

It might not have a direct effect on the electorate – undecided voters may not be reading Liberal Conspiracy to make their minds up on how to vote – but it still has an effect.

The impact, I’m hoping, will be on Labour party supporters and influencers and the commentariat. If not, it’s still an opinion. The thought that I’m making life more difficult for Brown and thus should not say anything won’t work here, perhaps on LabourHome or LabourList.

My aim is to bolster the left and minimise a Tory majority. Right now Brown isn’t helping.

Sunny, if you take Rowenna’s point (and by implication mine at #7) then responding to the male-female discrepancy (which unless I’ve misunderstood forms the premise of this post) with a piece of unsubstatiated speculation which is wholly lacking in explanatory power looks from the pov of a female to be at best a piece of pretty shoddy reasoning. Never mind this wishy-washy defeatist psychobabble about emotional connotations. What’s wrong with looking at the facts?

I said it before and I’ll say it again: Gordon Brown is not the only one that wants to listen to what female voters have to say on the subject. A polititariat (to use your lingo) whose decisions and policy (and blog-posts) are based on men’s conjecture as to what women are thinking is…not really attractive to females, shall we say. The words pot and kettle spring to mind. You haven’t got a leg to stand on. Or in other words, et tu, Brute.

Look, it’s over for New Lab. Over. And anyone complicit with the whole ill-judged project is tainted by association. Brown especially, because of his fiscal incompetence (y’know, like putting something aside when times are good, for when thngs go bad), but also his personality and manner, refusing to publicly admit error. Harman’s manner also counts heavily against her (hectoring, again refusing to admit flaws in her thinking), Miliband D comes across poorly in public as well (like a smugly self-satisfied schoolboy, petulant when his follies are pointed out). Trouble is Johnson doesn’t do humility either: he does the hearty, bluff bit, but lays things on too thick, almost Blair-like in being cringeingly ‘blokey’ at times.
The bunch couldn’t do apology with sincerity individually or collectively, because I think they all at the top of the New Lab food chain cannot accept that much of what’s wrong with the country is their fault.Of course, not all of it is, and some blame has been attached to them unfairly, but they cannot accept the extent to which things are directly attributable to them, and still trot out the old ‘a big boy did it and ran way’ type of excuse. They know they’re in the shit, but don’t quite know how it’s happened and still seem to think that of they shout their message louder it’ll save them. Trouble is that the people do hear that message and either don’t like it (the authoritarian, interfering stuff) or plain don’t believe it (and with good reason, given the incompetence). They need to be painfully honest and fess up, but neither action is in the New lab playbook, those at the top are constitutionally incapable of such actions, while those lower down, having been hand-picked for obedience lack the gumption, insight or plain brains to take the initiative.
The public are disillusioned with a crew that had a once-in-a-lifetime chance (with the resources and public goodwill) to really improve things, but they blew it. BIG time.You underestimate the sentiment of feeling betrayed at your peril, and it lasts.

@ Rowenna (17)

Do you really think that after a certain point people can’t change their attitudes in response to changes in policy?

It’s not that they can’t, it’s that they won’t, and with good reason when those changes in policy are being trumpeted by the same individuals who the public feel have betrayed them in the past. If you keep screwing people over, and lying to them, why be surprised when they refuse to believe your words about having changed?
It’s basic psychology: getting people to accept/believe in change in systems and rules and policies is hard, getting people to accept/believe in changes in other people is even harder.

“… incidentally the depths of my brain are sure they’ve encountered a statistic in the last decade or so that said women usually make up a higher proportion of the conservative vote? Am I wrong about that?”

Traditionally women have tended to vote Tory more than men. I think this may have changed after 1997.

2005 was the first election where Labour did better amongst women than amongst men.

On this question of the leadership, there is no polling evidence that Labour would do better with any other leader than with Brown – with the sole exception that they would do better if Blair returned as leader, which isn’t going to happen.

Another point is that things could get worse, and the next election could end up being much worse for Labour than the current polls predict. Labour’s problem isn’t just with the leader, it is that the rest of the Cabinet are also very, very weak and there is no obvious successor.

There’s always lots of short termist thinking in politics, but Labour should keep at least half an eye on the election after next. Over the next few months, they should work to sustain the economy recovery so that there is a consensus that it is growing at the time of the next election, and pick 2-3 high profile popular policies and use their majority to introduce them.

The likelihood is that the next Tory government will plunge the country back into recession and make life very difficult for a very large number of people. They are talented at public relations, but in key posts they will have cabinet ministers who have no experience whatsoever in the area that they are responsible for (think of Osborne on economic policy, Gove on education, Lansley on education and May and Freud on jobs/welfare). They will be found out very quickly, given the massive challenges that they will face.

So if Labour uses the next 4-5 years sensibly, regroup and learn some of the lessons about what they did wrong in power and promote some of the talented people who will be coming into parliament at the next election, then they have a very good chance of regaining power at the election after next. Kicking out the leader in the next couple of months for the sole reason that he is unpopular is not a good way to start this process.

I don’t hink it matters who gets in at the next election, this country is finished.

We’ve sold, lost of mortgaged anything of value and will be required to ‘work until we are 70′, as if the vast majority of us will be physically able to do so.

The police have lost control of everything but the motorist, education is a national disgrace, the public transport system is just unbelievable.

And we seem to have fallen out of love with everything except shopping and obesity.

As for Gordon Brown, the man is quite clearly a deluded lunatic, who will cling on and cling until he is dragged out of No 10 in a white coat, to the smoking ruins of the remains of the country.