ANALYSIS:Gordon Brown's party could just be fighting for second place after a run of bad luck
EVERYTHING FOR Gordon Brown and Labour now is about limiting the damage, and coming second in the battle for the share of the popular vote. This will determine in the public’s mind, perhaps, Labour’s right even to be in coalition negotiations, if they are needed after the May 6th election.
Every vote will be needed for Labour to have a chance of second place, given the surge for the Liberal Democrats. That was underlined by Brown’s warning yesterday that a Cameron victory would lead to immediate job losses for teachers and other public servants – and there are nearly five million of them spread through every constituency.
Cursed with a leader who is unpopular even with his own supporters, the Labour Party has brought Brown’s predecessor, Tony Blair, back into the fray in the final days. Blair made his first appearance in a month in London yesterday.
His intervention had always been planned but everything about Labour is now being seen through the darkest of prisms.
Even a meeting of Labour cabinet ministers yesterday, just hours after the final TV debate in Birmingham, was overshadowed when a bin lorry, whose driver was shouting abuse at the Labour gathering, hit a passing motorist.
Labour is now deeply worried that Conservative leader David Cameron’s performance in the final TV debate will lead to a rise in the Conservatives’ poll ratings in coming days – offering him the outside chance of forming a majority government on May 18th when the newly elected MPs gather for the first time in the House of Commons.
In Derby yesterday, Cameron acted as if he knows he is on the threshold of power.
Shortly after the debate ended in the University of Birmingham, Alastair Campbell was overheard by a Conservative s grumbling to a colleague, “That’s it, we’ve had it.” The Conservatives lost no time in spreading the word.
Campbell was forced to resort to Twitter to insist that he had been talking about his home football team, Burnley, even though they have already been relegated. He did not deny using the phrase.
Opinion pollsgave the debate to Cameron and deservedly so, although Brown once again finished third – even though he, like Cameron, had his best outing. However, it matters not what Brown does now. His audience has stopped listening to him.
Now, Labour is waiting nervously for the first editions of the Sunday newspapers, amid rumours that Rochdale pensioner Gillian Duffy – a "bigoted woman" in the words of Mr Brown – has sold her story to the Mail on Sundayand, or, the News of the World.
The Sunis rumoured to have made enquiries but is said to have backed off when Duffy said that she would not say she was going to vote for Cameron.
If it is true that she has sold her story, Duffy can do damage by saying she doesn’t accept Mr Brown’s grovelling apology. More importantly, she would inflict harm on Labour just by keeping the story live in the final days of the campaign, when Labour desperately needs a clear pitch to have any hope of getting its message across.
But while the Duffy affair has generated wall-to-wall coverage in the British press it has done little to Labour’s ratings.
That is a reflection of the weakness of the party’s position more than anything else, since Labour is now down to its “core of core” vote.
Significantly, it has legitimised debate about immigration – which could benefit the far-right British National Party.
The significance of immigration was illustrated by Cameron’s and, to a lesser extent, Brown’s decision to relentlessly focus on Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg’s immigration policy.
He says that he would offer a route to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of illegals in the UK, if they have been there for 10 years and have obeyed the law.
In practical terms, the plan has merit and mirrors what has happened elsewhere but it leaves the Liberal Democrat leader having to explain himself.
While it is far from clear whether it will do him harm, both Labour and the Conservatives both pray that it will make it more difficult for Mr Clegg to enjoy another bounce in the opinion polls – the Big Mo (for momentum), as it is termed in US politics, in the immediate run-up to voting.
