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Well. Initially, the 'modernisation' agenda within the party was supposed to make us electable. And some could say it worked. We did after all, get elected to government. Thing is, a hamster in a gimp suit could have beaten the Tories in '97. Labour didn't win, the Conservatives lost.
The basic idea was that the working-classes and trade unionists were our natural constituency, and they'll stick with us out of loyalty. In the mean time we change our focus to bring on board the centre ground voters. Most of what Labour has been up to for the last decade has been courting the middle class voters: so called Middle England. Supposedly this meant we added them to our core. I'm not sure how much patience the party elect think their 'natural constituency' have for treachery, but the Party has severed many of its formal links with the trades union movement, thereby reassuring their middle-class voters and antagonising the fuck out of their original supporters. Theyve engaged in policy making that Thatcher wouldn't have dared to broach for fear she'd have been going too far to the right. They have consistently shat upon public sector workers and farmed out the few bits of public owned services left after the Thatcher years to private enterprise. So, they've lost that other stalwart wing of the party, the public sector workers.
Theyve taken 12 years to get serious about equal pay. They're threatening punitive action against the unemployed, just as the need for economic security is paramount in people's minds. They've been so busy making sure they don't upset the economically strong, they forgot their historic mission for the economically vulnerable. Warning after warning. Row after row. Rebellion after rebellion and wave upon wve of lost members. Unions withdrawing their subs and support. Backbenchers delivering stark warnings from their members. When Brown came in, there was at least a flurry of hope that this might bring the party some way back to its heartland. We were wrong. That realisation has hit and support is dropping from the party in crucial areas, places which have previously been the centre of the party's strength.
We haven't brought enough of the middle-class to us to balance out the losses in our traditional consituency. Why the party leadership cannot see this is something of a mystery. But much of it is to do with what amounts to thirty years and more of vicious internecine warfare at every level of the party.
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