Labour's Future

[ludwig]

Can they ever again expect to form a majority government, or is the best they can hope for from now on a coalition with the SNP?

[jno]

I remember the same question being asked after John Major's triumph (376 seats and the most votes ever). So who knows, eh.

[-Talbot-]

Reading AB today you would think there was a Consevative landslide victory....when was the last Conservative majority?

[Gromit]

Jno,

The 376 was a Thatcher election result.

[Prudie]

OG's first answer was the best response, that's exactly what will happen.

[Svejk]

Labour wont recover for a long time, if ever. Bad as Miliband was, he was head & shoulders above the other specimens in the Shadow Cabinet.

[AB Editor]

No, game's up for Labour.

[jomifl]

Ironically the Scots who voted SNP have disenfranchised themselves because The SNP can never have enough seats to wield power in the UK rather than Scotland. Whereas if they had stayed with Labour they could have exerted influence within the party. Hert ruling heid a'm feart.

[jno]

sorry, Gromit, you're correct. The 14m vote was right, though, well ahead of the 11+ million they won last night..

[steg]

" Ironically the Scots who voted SNP have disenfranchised themselves because The SNP can never have enough seats to wield power in the UK rather than Scotland. Whereas if they had stayed with Labour they could have exerted influence within the party. Hert ruling heid a'm feart."

If every Scot voted labour ,labour would of still lost

[Orderlimit]

Labour are finished and good riddance.

[jomifl]

Steg, I deliberately used the word 'influence' rather than 'power'.

[naomi24]

I was listening to Jack Straw being interviewed today about the reasons for Labour’s disastrous performance. He said something like “The people haven’t left Labour – Labour has left the people” – and he’s right. Labour has failed to move with the times, it’s stuck in the past, it fought an election based upon non-existent class divide, and it’s taken what it arrogantly assumed were its supporters for granted. It has a lot of work to do before it can possibly hope to regain the confidence of the electorate.

[steg]

You used both

[jomifl]

Yes Steg I did , because they could not wield 'power' because they would never have enough seats.They could however wield 'influence' within the labour party or any other mainstream party that stood a chance of forming a government. I hope that is clearer.

[steg]

Aye a wee bit,
Cammy has already promised to make the Scottish Parliament the most devolved in the world .labour weren't even interested in Scotland just wanted the seats, they have paid the price, records tumbled with every seat the SNP won. the people have spoken again

[andy-hughes]

I think it will take a generation for Labour to recover - if indeed they ever do.

A good start would be choosing a leader whom the electorate could seriously imagine as an international statesman, and a strong charismatic leader, and Labour have something of a poor record here.

Michael Foot ...Neil Kinnock ... Margaret Beckett ... Gordon Brown ... Ed Milliaand.

It's not a great list is it?

[Orderlimit]

No, it's not a great list at all. I don't get why anyone would vote Labour and anyway, it was always going to be a wasted vote as they were never going to win.

[andy-hughes]

Orderlimit - //I don't get why anyone would vote Labour and anyway, it was always going to be a wasted vote as they were never going to win. //

I am not at all sure that this is the case.

I have opined on here for years that I regard Milliband as unelectable, and so he proved to be, but up until today, I was of the opinion that Labour might swing it - albeit in a coalition.

I think the Con majority shows as much about the electorate's disgust with the other parties as is does with their faith in the Conservatives.

All the experts were getting ready to discuss the permutations of the hung parliament they were sure we were going to get, and the results have confounded them completely.

Interesting times ahead.

[mikey4444]

Of course the Labour Party will come back and win. The Tories were defeated in far greater numbers in 1997, (LAB 418, CON 165) in the Labour landslide, and came back in 2010 to win.

Why was that possible but it is not possible for Labour to re-group and win again ? They have a much smaller mountain to climb than the Tories did after
1997, after all.

[jno]

the Tories do have a problem: Europe. They're split down the middle on it; other parties aren't. They've done best when they've just ignored the problem, but Cameron had to promise a referendum to appease his own right wing. That's going to be messy. Whether this leads to an opening for Labour is impossible to say, as it's not their problem. But it should be an interesting five years.