Labour’s having a rough time of it, but considering real long term public opinion typically lags about a year behind, the worst is yet to come. The longer Brown stays in, the more permenant and engrained the hostility towards Labour will become.

Tony Blair, for all his trickery and deceit, made Labour electable 3 times in a row. In hindsight I think perhaps I underestimated this man’s talent – he made Labour electable. The mind boggles. Famously Alistair Campbell said, “We Don’t Do God” which I thought, at the time, meant they didn’t want to offend Christians. Turns out the opposite was true, that they “Didn’t Do God” because Blair’s religiosity would frighten voters and turn the media spotlight onto something that Campbell intuitively understood would be electoral poison. But then that was the point – say nothing and let people see whatever they wanted to see.

But the veil of electability, so fragile and so hard fought for, is being brutally torn down. The latest Kamikaze ‘Scorched Earth’ Budget shows a political party still thinking no further ahead than the next day’s Newspapers. Just do whatever it takes to get a popularity boost, deal with the consequences when they arise.

So in this manner they’ve borrowed more money than all previous Governments put together since the creation of the Bank of England. Prudence? Golden Rules? The golden rule was, “whatever it takes to get good headlines.” This ‘strategy’ has, unsurprisingly, nearly bankrupted the whole economy.

Next, the Labour Party itself has borrowed too much money without the means to pay it back. They are in a financially compromised position. This mountain of Party Debt (acquired during General Elections) means the risk that they can be ‘bought’ is very real. They need the money so desperately that they have no power or leverage over the Unions – or any other donor. This internal ‘strategy’ has nearly bankrupted their own party.

It’s ironic that the party’s own internal financial conduct told us more about the reality of Labour’s ‘prudence’ long before it became easily apparent in their handling of the economy. 

Finally, just as their “do whatever it takes to get a good headline” approach to policy has brought both their party and the economy to their proverbial knees, so this ‘strategy’ is exposed as political cowardice and…  moral bankruptcy. There’s nothing but media manipulation and creating the illusion of ‘good government’. 

So that’s the hat-trick. We’re not quite there yet – only 1 of the 3 so far – but there’s still a year to go. Most disturbing for me is the Party bankruptcy, vulnerability to coercion,  and the growing power of the Unions. Except now the Unions don’t need to strike – they just need to threaten to withdraw funding. When one particular lobby group is able to pull the strings of Government like this, we should all be very concerned indeed.