Skipper

My drinking mates will confirm I essayed on Monday night the same argument used by Geoffrey Wheatcroft in yesterday's Guardian. This is that Labour probably have to accept that their three terms is all they are going to get. The Conservatives were the party which logged two plus successive victories during the fifties and the eighties but by the end of both the feeling that the pendulum just had to swing next time was palpable.

I know it would place me in the camp of what Rawnsley called the 'fatalists' in his Sunday piece, but I think the signs of a similar change of national mood are now discernible in the polls and in the media. This doesn't mean Labour are going to lose, of course(high employment figures today suggest the economy is standing up pretty well), but it does suggest that we probably will. Wheatcroft goes a little further in suggesting that it would be better for democracy and, indeed for Labour if this happens. There is much in such a view: three terms stalls the democratic renewal process for just about the maximum time.

A fourth term for Labour would overstretch it and encourage more of those those silly claims that we have become a 'one party state'. It might also prove disastrous for Labour. Already reeling under a succession of disasters and acute problems, a further four years would hammer nails into the coffin of Labour chances of getting back into office by the mid 2020s. It will be a shame for Gordon, who, his supporters will claim, is entitled to another term, but, quite frankly, I disagree. I would argue that his conduct in office to date establishes that he does not deserve another term.