Pending disaster for Labour on election nightThe Observer
Sunday 31 May 2009
Alan Johnson, the cabinet minister widely tipped as a
successor to Gordon Brown, prepared Labour for disaster at
the polls as he predicted it would suffer the worst local
and European election results in its history.
In a candid admission last night, the health secretary said
he expected all three mainstream parties to do "badly" in
Thursday's polls. But he believed that Labour would be hit
hardest by the overwhelming tide of public anger over the
MPs' expenses scandal. Raising his profile as a future
leadership contender, he told the Observer: "If you are
asking me for an honest assessment about whether recent
events will have an effect, they are bound to, because we
are the brand leader, we are the party of government and it
will have more of an effect on us than the other parties."
Senior Tory sources predicted that Labour would suffer the
humiliation of losing control of all county councils across
the whole of England after Thursday. The Tory high command
is confident of taking outright command of Lancashire and
Staffordshire -two of the four councils that remain under
Labour's power, and of depriving them of overall authority
in the other two, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.
With the BNP close to winning at least one seat in the
European parliament and Labour at risk of being pushed into
third place by Ukip, activists are questioning whether
Brown can survive an electoral massacre on the scale being
predicted.
A Sunday Telegraph poll last night also revealed more
people intend to vote Lib Dem at the next general election
than Labour. The ICM survey put Labour in third place for
the first time since 1987 on just 22% - three points adrift
of the Lib Dems and 18 behind the Conservatives.
Eric Pickles, the Conservative party chairman, said Johnson
was "clearly doing his best to lower expectations". But
Labour did appear to have "given up" serious campaigning
across large parts of the country. In last year's council
elections, Labour slumped to the lowest level of support of
any governing party in history.
Johnson accepted that Labour would take yet more punishment
on Thursday. But he urged people to resist registering
protest votes with extremists such as the BNP. "My message
to those people who would normally have voted for a
mainstream parties is 'don't change your mind because of
allowances'. Registering your vote at what has gone on for
a protest would just lead to a far worse situation where we
have people who are full of hate representing us by default
in the European parliament."
Last night Tory leader David Cameron was forced to defend
his expenses claims after it was reported that he paid off
a loan of £75,000 on his London home shortly after taking
out a £350,000 tax-payer funded mortgage to pay for his
constituency home in Oxfordshire. Cameron said his claims
had been "perfectly reasonable".
In a sign of his frustration at Labour's failure to land
blows on Cameron and Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg
over the expenses scandal, Johnson said the two, whom he
dubbed the "self-righteous brothers", had been allowed to
take the moral high ground without being challenged over
their own financial arrangements. "I am amazed about what
an easy ride Cameron and Clegg have had over this whole
issue," he said.
0 comments:
Post a Comment