Perspectives
An eclipsed fortune for new Labour
ON a sunny Friday in the month of May, by the sparkling water of the Thames, Tony Blair, Britain's former prime minister famously declared that a new dawn had broken. It was eleven years ago that new Labour was gripped with an unprecedented euphoria, portending a period of its unprecedented triumph for over a decade.
On May 2, 2006 it was a presumed wake-up call for the Labour Party at City Hall, waiting for the further confirmation of what a day of results had already suggested: that after an era of dominance since the mid-90s Labour had entered its twilight and its euphoria was about to be eclipsed.
It is observed amid a collapse of Brown's reputation on every front that the Labour decays steadily to wards certain defeat in 2010, and it is already going through the spasms of a dying patient. It's steep fall was foretold by the horror show of a performance in the local council election early this month across England and Wales.
As the results started pouring in, no one was in doubt that dusk for Labour was drawing close. As was feared by the party enthusiasts, Labour slumped to a third place that seemed oddly tolerable, given that they had managed no better in 2004 while going on to win the general election a year later.
But, on that occasion Labour bagged at least 26 percent share of the votes, this year it was down to 24 per-centits worst performance in 40 years. And that wipe out in 1968 was followed two years later by defeat in the general election. The local council election in Britain has often been the precursor of what party positions would be in the general election. The Labourites, therefore, are struggling to believe that the same fate does not wait them now.
As Ed Balls, the Children, Schools and Families Secretary, almost instantaneously admitted to BBC on the same day this couldn't be dismissed "as simply about a normal set of mid-term problems." Indeed, this was more than the traditional bloody nose administered by a restless electorate half-way through a parliament.
That much was clear from the sheer scale of the punch Labour received. Moreover, Labour didn't just trail the opposing conservatives as they could do in previous council contests. Not only were they 20 points behind this time, the conservatives crossed 44 percent, just three points behind the high-water mark reached by Tony Blair in local elections of 1995, when new Labour was only two years away from a landslide victory.
But this was about more than fudging the numbers. Even before the London mayoral result was in, the conservatives overwhelmed the last few Labour bastions in the south before also making an inroad in the north.
On the fateful day of council election early this month, the Conservatives took over in Bellwether Burya northern town with an uncanny knack for picking winners. This was the time Cameron broke out of his southern comfort zone and threw off the stigma of his inability to break through in the north.
With the Labour citadel almost demolished, the people seem nonplussed as to why this happening is marking a grievous setback for Labour. There is always a pendulum effect in politics, and in multi-party democracies governments do eventually lose their grip on power. If that is happening now in the third term it is not totally unusual: losing a fourth election is perfectly within the norm.
What's more, these are economic hard times. No matter how angry the voters were with Blair four years ago, most felt good in their walletsgood enough to re-elect him in 2005. Gordon Brown does not enjoy that cushion now.
As a result, Labour's dusk now appears all pervading. Even for London, it seemed to herald the end of one of the most remarkable careers in British politicsas Ken Livingstone, the man who defied Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, finally succumbed to political mortality.
He was the last remaining representative of a brand of the Left that loomed large in the 1970s and is now all but extinct, at least within the upper reaches of Labour. Now London is about to embark on a different kind of experiment, having apparently anointed Boris Johnson as the most powerful conservative in Britain. As dusk falls on one era, a new dawn begins.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments