The (Political) Death of Jamie Reed

The symptoms that he is in denial are inescapable ...

Jamie Reed, Labour MP for Copeland, wrote an article on the "Progress Online" website yesterday, republished on Labour home, which is one of the most extreme examples of wishful thinking I have seen in the past decade.

I republished a post a few weeks ago, which was written by a Labour activist the day before the Crewe and Nantwich by-election: after canvassing the seat he somehow managed to convince himself that Labour would hold it and the the (accurate) predictions of an impending Conservative gain had been wholly invented by the press. Similarly I can remember a few of my tory colleagues in the mid 1990's who convinced themselves that the Conservatives had a cat in hell's chance of winning the 1997 election. Jamie Reed's article "The death of Conservatism" is political self-delusion of the same order.

"The worldwide symptoms of its decline are inescapable" is his sub-title. The first paragraph reads

"Across the developed world, in Germany, France, Spain, Britain and now the United States, the politics of conservatism is in seemingly inexorable decline. Political correspondents in have so far largely failed to spot this emerging trend, but the evidence seems to be clear cut: conservatism is dying."

You can read the full article at

http://www.progressonline.org.uk/Magazine/article.asp?a=3045

Now how could political correspondents have largely "failed to spot this emerging trend"? Could it possibly be because every recent opinion poll in Britain has had the Conservatives above 40% and Labour below 30% with both many opinion polls and real elections projecting a 20% Conservative lead?

Jamie's article is largely waffle, but insofar as there is a shred of substance to his suggestion that Conservatism in Britain is dying it is based on the fact that David Cameron has recast Conservative principles to meet the 21st century. Anyone with a remotely adequate knowledge of British political history knows that the reason the Conservative party has survived for three hundred years is that it has reinvented itself at least once per century to fit changing circumstances. Of course, we no longer need to push some of the things which Conservatives stood for when I first went into politics because Jamie's own party has also adopted them. Some other things need to change as circumstances have changed.

I don't believe that any party would be wise to take the next election for granted and I certainly don't. To convince yourself that the decline of your opposition in inescapable when you are in power and ahead in the polls is foolish. To publicly advance such an argument when your political support has collapsed over the past 12 months is not a good advertisement for your political judgement.

Comments

alistair said…
I hope Jamie has a new job to go to as he will soon be finished here. Sunk by a unpopular government and a incompetent local council

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