STEPHEN POLLARD: Why I, a Labour writer, believe that after 115 years...THE PARTY'S OVER
It was bad enough for Labour on Election night. But it's only now, three weeks afterwards, that the full scale of the party's defeat is properly beginning to sink in.
Ed Miliband's notorious 'Ed stone' listing his promises on a giant slab, has turned out to be not just his own political tombstone, but the Labour Party's too, after 115 years.
It would have been more accurate if the words 'RIP socialism' had been carved into the slab, a reflection of the bitter irony that it took the son of a Marxist to bury the creed for ever.
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Ed Miliband's notorious 'Ed stone' listing his promises on a giant slab, has turned out to be not just his own political tombstone, but the Labour Party's too, after 115 years
One by one, Labour's leadership candidates are rapidly disowning every element of Miliband's manifesto, and pretending that they never really had anything to do with it.
They realise – and you'd have to be spectacularly blinkered not to see it – that Labour's programme was comprehensively trounced on May 7.
Even the union barons' darling, doe-eyed Andy Burnham – who has spent the past five years trotting out Left-wing platitudes about greedy capitalists and asserting his knee-jerk hostility to the private sector at every given opportunity – is now saying how big a fan he is of business.
On Friday he said – with a straight face – that those who embody the 'spirit of enterprise' should be 'as much our heroes as the nurse or the teacher'.
Just over three weeks ago, all the leadership contenders were signed up to a programme for government that promised to keep spending money we didn't have and would reverse the Coalition's welfare reforms.
Now, they'd have us believe they are more careful with taxpayers' money and tougher on welfare than the Tories have ever been. It's not just shameless – it takes the rest of us for fools.
Now we know that a Left-wing party, with Left-wing policies, just can't work – and the latest version has been comprehensively rejected by the electorate
But let's take them at their word. Let's assume that they really do mean what they say, and that a Labour Party led by Burnham, Yvette Cooper or Liz Kendall really would be pro-business, radical on welfare and take an axe to public spending.
In which case, one has to ask: What exactly is the point of the Labour Party now?
If Labour's 'offer', as the marketing jargon has it, is that it is basically just the same as the Tories, then why bother with it? Why would any voter not just go for the real thing?
But there's an even bigger issue. The party's problem is not just that its leadership candidates are ditching its old policies and in doing so falling in line behind the Tories. The real problem is that the three candidates simply have no serious alternative but to do just that: To ditch the existing policies.
They have to do it.
It makes complete sense for them to ditch Ed Miliband's programme, you see, because the policies aren't just wrong: They've been proved to be politically toxic, too.
Because now we know that a Left-wing party, with Left-wing policies, just can't work – and the latest version has been comprehensively rejected by the electorate, just as it was when Labour took a Left-wing swerve in 1983 and in 1987.
That, by definition, leaves only the centre ground as an option for Labour. But with the Tories now bang square in the middle of the centre ground, where on earth can Labour go?
Even the union barons' darling, doe-eyed Andy Burnham – who has spent the past five years trotting out Left-wing platitudes about greedy capitalists and asserting his knee-jerk hostility to the private sector at every given opportunity – is now saying how big a fan he is of business
It was, after all, the new deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, Robert Halfon, who suggested immediately after the Election that his party's name should be changed to the Workers' Party. The suggestion was entirely serious and shows Labour's fundamental problem.
With the Queen's Speech promoting a series of measures designed to help people who work hard – such as removing tax for anyone working 30 hours a week on the minimum wage, and doubling childcare – and David Cameron talking all the time about working people and One Nation Conservatism, it's clear the Tories are fully focused on keeping control of that space.
It's the Tories who speak for Mr and Ms Average Brit, who know what they want and offer it to them.
In fact it was Liz Kendall, the one Labour candidate who grasped the scale of Labour's problem long before Ed Miliband was given the heave-ho by voters, who has put it best: 'What most people want is something to do, somewhere to live, something to look forward to and someone to love.'
Labour's crisis is that – love apart – it's the Tories who get that.
Most Labour politicians, for all their current frantic ditching of the party's policies, think the point of power is to push people around in whatever way politicians think best.
That's in their DNA and it's not going to change. It's why they join the Labour Party.
Which is another way of saying the Labour Party's entire future is now in doubt. Because it's just not what people accept now. The era of cap-doffing, take-what-you're-given, do-what-your-elders-and-betters-tell-you died with the rise of consumerism.
If a Conservative Party led by an Old Etonian is more instinctively in tune with what working people want than the Labour Party, then that label has become something of a sad joke.
Labour may have been formed as the party of the workers. But its drift away from them long predates this month's defeat.
If you remove Tony Blair from the calculation – and most of the Labour Party would love to do that, appearing to wish he'd never existed – then Labour has not won a majority since 1974.
It was Liz Kendall, the one Labour candidate who grasped the scale of Labour's problem long before Ed Miliband was given the heave-ho by voters, who has put it best: 'What most people want is something to do, somewhere to live, something to look forward to and someone to love'
That is a damning indictment for any party.
But Blair did, of course, win three landslides for Labour. The first and only time that a Labour government has lasted for at least two terms.
And he did that by running as an explicitly centrist party – a leader who happened to be in charge of the Labour Party, but who floating voters and Conservatives could support.
He was only able to do that for two reasons. First, the Conservatives had vacated that centre ground. But secondly, the Labour Party let him. That's why Labour's current straits are so dire. Because the contempt in which so many Labour members hold Blair – the man who won them three landslides! – shows how hopeless a task it looks for Labour to make itself electable.
But it's worse even than that. Because even if the new Labour leader was to come up with a popular, sane, serious programme for the 2020 Election, the chances of Labour managing to win are slim to remote.
First, it would need a swing of 8.75 per cent across the UK. But with its traditional Scottish base wiped out, that's 50 seats gone already, meaning it would need a landslide in England.
Seats such as Chingford, Kensington, Filton & Bradley Stoke and Basingstoke would all have to turn Labour for the first time in history.
It's possible. But with the party not now even able to offer a reason why anyone beyond its core should vote for it, you'd to be brave indeed to think it likely. Brave – or foolish.
It makes complete sense for them to ditch Ed Miliband's programme, you see, because the policies aren't just wrong: They've been proved to be politically toxic, too
Labour dreamed of emulating the success of France's socialist President Francois Hollande. The Party could do worse than follow the lead of another French politician Nicolas Sarkozy, who, like the Labour Party, is trying to regain power.
Yesterday, he ditched the name of his Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) for the more voter friendly The Republicans. Perhaps it is time to bury the name of Labour Party along with the 'Ed stone' and replace it with something more voter friendly.
With the Liberal Democrats a busted flush, why not change Labour for The Democrats?
Feel free to send your own suggestions on a postcard to Labour HQ at 1 Brewers Green, London SW1H 0RH.
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