"A Progressive Century"?

According to Charles Clarke, Labour thinks too much about past achievements (well, it has been a long time since the Forties - that is what he means, isn't it?), and is therefore running the risk of losing the next Election, whereas winning it would usher in "a progressive century" as seen in Scandinavia.

Where does one even begin? Clarke belonged to the nominally Labour faction that functioned, at the height of the Cold War, for all practical purposes as if it were part of the Communist Party. So his is a classic New Labour background, and he duly supported every Blairite actual or attempted destruction of exactly the sorts of things that characterised any "progressive century" in Scandinavia. What he now has in mind is that that destruction should be taken even further.

As for Labour losing the next Election, the bookies are still only offering 9/4 against a Labour victory. But at that point the Tories really would collapse, and there would be no purpose to the Labour Party. Only the fear of the imaginary Tory bogeyman keeps it going, at least until its overwhelmingly elderly members die or are simply too frail to do what little campaigning work there still is. So there os no purpose to the Labour Party even now. At best, it is literally useless. If it adopted Clarke's agenda, then it would be a very great deal worse than that.