Normal Service Is About To Be Resumed

Peter Hitchens is rehearsing his strange little theory that Labour wants to lose the next General Election. In fact, insofar as it is true that it is not trying terribly hard, then that is because it does not need to.

2010 was the first meaningfully contested General Election since 1992. From September 1992 (when only political obsessives had ever heard of Tony Blair), there had been no need for Labour to fight the three in between, and no point in any one else's bothering to do so.

Based on the very consistent polling in the key marginal seats, that normal service is about to be resumed. But without Blairism or the Blairites, the only people anywhere on the political spectrum who truly want David Cameron to win next year, and with the Conservative Party hit even harder than it was in 1997.

Yet still with about 200 MPs. Like Labour, that is its floor, its guaranteed bare minimum. It is about as many as it can expect any time before 2030, but even so. Next year will also show us where the Lib Dems' floor is. At least 25 seats, and possibly 30.

That latter is five times even the most unrealistically extravagant estimate of the number of UKIP MPs. UKIP would not be holding the balance of power even if there were a hung Parliament, which there is not going to be. It may even end up with fewer seats than the Greens, who have a far more concentrated electoral base. UKIP could quite plausibly have no seats whatever, even with over 20 per cent of the vote.

People who dispute any of this do not understand how First Past The Post works. Complaints about its unfairness are aired for a couple of days after every General Election. They have been so after every one for as long as David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg or Nigel Farage, who is far younger than he appears, can have had any political consciousness. Come the Monday, the world has invariably moved on. So it will be again.

The story of next year will not be the Labour win itself. Everyone always knew that whoever won in 2010 was bound to lose in 2015, 2020 and 2025, with a proper fight again in 2030. In hindsight, the same thing applied in 1992 in relation to the subsequent four General Elections.

No, apart from the fact that the UKIP representative will end the Election Night coverage with no more right to be there than any of half a dozen other people, and quite possibly with less, the story of next year will be the Labour win having stood explicitly against the Blair legacy, by then quite possibly including the findings of the Chilcot Report.

That, and the extraordinary tenacity of the Lib Dems. Followed, in 2020 and 2025, by easy Labour wins without the slightest suggestion of any "Tory threat" such as is sometimes claimed to be necessary in order to get the Labour vote out.

No wonder that the old Blairite ghouls, most of whom are retiring and none of whom will ever again hold office, are so anxious to plant toxic matter in the media. The present drivel about Alan Johnson is of the same species. But Peter Hitchens really ought to know better than to feed such weeds.

When Labour easily wins an overall majority, then will anyone in the media be sacked? No one was when the Conservatives failed to do so last time, another prediction that could only have been made by people who could not add up.