Gordon Brown into the centre stage and talking up Jobs and international aid, the party tried to temporarily re-brand itself as a more traditional social democratic formation, toning down the "new" in New Labour.
A purely cosmetic manoeuvre, this was necessary to get out a core vote without which the whole project would collapse. Anti-war stalwarts like Tony Benn and Ken Livingstone were drafted in to cynically persuade voters to back prowar MPs on this basis.
And on the eve of the poll two successive opinion pieces from heavyweight pro-Labour columnists in The Guardian more or less said "vote Labour get Brown". With voters punishing the party that is now likely sooner rather than later.
Of course Brown resolutely stands for the whole government record since 1997 - including unconditional support for the Iraq war. But this retreat from a long-planned strategy in a bid to hide the party's Blairism was evidently an act of desperation in order to avoid an even worse kicking. In part this reflects the fact that the new middle class Labour vote is fickle and will turn to any party that will deliver the "capitalism by consensus" approach that it wanted from Blair. That is hardly surprising perhaps, but it puts into question the whole basis for Blair's "project". More important is the fact that there is no longer a loyal working class vote. The days of a Labour majority in the working class are Bouc
Look at electors under 30 and it is much worse: in opinion polls, only 30% indicated that they would definitely vote. Amongst those support for the Liberal Democrats had a commanding lead with Labour trailing under 30%creating the possibility that as little as 10% of youth voted Labour.
In addition, among those in the traditional Labour base who actually did vote for the party, this was increasingly "tactical" vote - not out of loyalty or principle, but for negative anti-Tory reasons, due to the absence of any alternative or lack of confidence in any that exist.
Therefore, not only is the Labour vote down, but long term allegiances are therefore beginning to change or are up for grabs. The question is whether this can be translated into support for a new socialist party.
The Liberal Democats provide an interesting point of analysis. Long before Iraq, they exploited this opportunity - moving in wholesale to take over large urban local authorities in the working class heartlands of Labour. They have further built on this in the recent general election. It is tempting to categorise this as simply a rightwards shift of the working class after years of defeat. Certainly the Lib Dems are wedded immigration controls, privatisation and cuts like their free market fellow thinkers in the other two parties. But they are widely viewed as being to the left of Labour, particularly through opposing the initial invasion of Iraq and propos-