Labour hasn’t been this gloomy since Kinnock lost in 1992
Gordon Brown has his work cut out to raise the spirits of the gloomiest Labour conference for 15 years when he makes his keynote speech in Manchester on Tuesday. The last time the party was so depressed at its annual get-together was when it had just confounded all expectations and lost the 1992 election.
The global economic crisis has eased the threat against Brown's leadership for the moment – and possibly, according to some plotters, until next spring. But it does not disguise the pessimism and low expectations pervading much of the Manchester conference centre and even more the dozens of fringe meetings surrounding it.
The best Ministers can do is to urge delegates not to lose heart, to reassure them that defeat is not inevitable and to take the fight to the Tories. One senior Labour figure has already made the same argument in public, only to admit to the Mole later: "I don't really believe it."
There is plenty of evidence to exacerbate the dark mood. Labour is finding it hard to dismiss as 'just another opinion poll' the survey conducted by PoliticsHome.com, released over the weekend, which concluded that David Cameron is on course to win a 146-seat landslide at the next election. The survey was conducted among 35,000 voters in 238 marginal seats and echoes private research by Labour HQ kept under lock and key.
Jockeying for position in the leadership stakes has so far been muted - with the exception of David Miliband giving a couple of soft-focus interviews to papers this weekend, but then using a fringe meeting on Sunday to deny he wanted a leadership election.
Incidentally, the Mole has been urged not to believe Alan Johnson's protestations he wouldn't stand for the top job. One friend claims: "He has said he would only be interested if the party faced an emergency. Well what is this?"
Gordon Brown gave a foretaste of a possible sackcloth-and-ashes tone to his conference speech when he admitted to Andrew Marr on Sunday morning that he had made mistakes as Prime Minister and promised: "I will do better." It was a remarkable note of contrition - but it's hardly the sort of rallying cry to stop the rampant Tories in their tracks.
FIRST POSTED SEPTEMBER 22, 2008
New Labour: an elite defined by hate
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