For the benefit of the one in China or Philli or wherever you are...

Crisis avast!

Well, what a few days, the list of fallen MP's and cabinet ministers is bordering on endless, but Labour potentially still stand a chance. An election now would be disastrous, obviously, due to the damage inflicted by the expenses scandal, but this will blow over within the next month as the public become tired of the repetition and revelations dry up. After this Labour can regroup and at least fight out the general election properly in May. However, if the party continues to implode and publicly squabble they will fare no better than the Conservatives did in the mid-nineties. A divided party can never prosper.

So, in my opinion, this is what will happen. Labour will get it together to an extent and fight the general election out properly, however the Conservative lead will be a hard nut to crack, the only hope is that their now ingrained mentality as an opposition party will mean that they will continue to fail to create polices and fight the election as an opposition party rubbishing the government. This is evident in their approach to European elections, choosing to tell the public to pre-empt a general election with their votes. Wrong move, especially when yr position on Europe is that we need regain sovereignty, therefore logic dictates that if the EU is sovereign over UK law (which it is) then surely you should be fighting the election on policies rather than to pre-empt an election in the subsidiary state. However, this continued attitude will probably still win them the election in May but not give them the landslide victory they would most probably obtain at this moment in time. So, Labour lose the election, but they will not slip to third place, whilst the Lib dems are making some gains in the local council elections against labour this is more likely down to the annoyance of voters with the two main parties over the expenses scandal, which will seem a million years away in May, but perhaps gains in local politics will give the lib dems a boost in credibility and dispel their image as the incumbent party.

Labour will then have at least four years to regroup the party, if they are clever they will quickly unite (probably under Johnson) and hopefully get back to their core voters. This means grass roots Labour supporters in places like Scotland, who they have been systematically losing to the SNP. However, if they wish to win the election they will still need to appease the centre-right, whether or not Johnson can do this is debatable, business leaders may be wary of him as a former Trade Union leader, although he has shown his stripes as a progressive, leaving behind his Marxist inspired roots and supporting the abolition of clause IV in favour of Blair's modern reappraisal, clause four. So what does Labour really have to do to win an election in 2014, in my opinion they need to reboot the party the same way Blair did in 1994, bare in mind 2014 will represent twenty full years since that big progression and the party has really done nothing as radical since, house of lords reform has all but ground to a halt, devolution has been a success albeit a shot in the foot on Labour's part as it appears to have given a bigger political base to parties like the SNP and Plyyd Cymru, oops.

So, I'm bored of writing this now so I'm gonna have to wrap it up, I've sort of made my point but got lost a bit along the way. If the Labour front bench don't stick together and stop ripping shards out of each other in public they are completely doomed and will end up like the Conservatives, which is to destined to spend the next fourteen years in opposition with no policies. Together they stand and they divide as they fall.

Happier times, when the gash was flowing:

For the benefit of the one in China or Philli or wherever you are...