How to ensure a Tory victory by Jackie Ashley

Don’t you just love Monday as you push people aside at the newsstands in your enthusiasm to get a copy of the Guardian.  Then you hurriedly turn to the comment pages for the usual stimulating thoughts from Mrs Marr.  Today is no exception, as she lays out her plans to ensure Labour stay out of power for years.

She starts with the ever-so-obvious:

So if Labour wants to keep the unions on board, the party is going to have to distinguish Labour cuts from Tory cuts, in a way that mobilises the maximum support.

Ploughing on through her thoughts we get to this:

Next, they have to look hard at middle class benefits, as indeed the IoD/Taxpayers' Alliance are doing, and the Conservatives will too. In these hard times, there are still plenty of higher-rate taxpayers getting help who could manage without it. I've always supported the idea of universal child benefit. But if there have to be cuts, then taking away child benefit from the better off, and the winter fuel payment from richer pensioners, would seem sensible ideas and are on Labour's agenda.

Now she tells us how Blair won:

If it were still 1996, or even 2001, this would have been suicidal.The whole game was about triangulation and persuading the floating, aspirational middle class voters to back New Labour.

Yes, we know that.  She moves to the present day and says Labour has already lost:

But times have changed. Millions of these people – though not those in the public sector – have already defected in their minds to Cameron and are a lost cause for Labour. What would be catastrophic would be the simultaneous defection of Labour's core vote.

There’s more:

Ministers and ex-ministers talk about the difference between an election in which Labour lost – but with percentage support in the early 30s – and one with support in the low-20s. It is the difference between a party able to regroup in opposition and exploit the tough times the Tories face, and one on the edge of disintegration.

She winds herself up for the finale:

So Labour would be advised to listen to the unions for once.

There we have it.  The election is lost and all Labour should do is protect the core vote.  The long years of opposition await Labour if it goes down this well trodden route of hitting the middle class.  We hear that Blair is spending 10 days per month in the Middle East.  Emigrate, dear boy, emigrate.