Letters from London by Julian Barnes

Author:Julian Barnes [Barnes, Julian]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-55737-7
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2010-10-26T16:00:00+00:00

BY LUNCHTIME ON FRIDAY, with only a few Ulster results left to be declared, John Major’s majority had grown to the comparatively decent—and, in terms of all predictions, incredibly enormous—size of twenty-one. It is effectively larger, given the inert status of Ulster Unionists in mainland politics, so Mr. Major will not have to worry overmuch when a backbench MP gets stuck in a traffic jam on the way to vote or starts complaining of chest pains. The Prime Minister will be able to ride out a few by-election losses and govern without much Parliamentary threat for up to five years. Not even Andrew Lloyd Webber’s threat to leave the country in the event of a Labour victory had persuaded enough people to vote for Neil Kinnock.

Labour optimists pointed out that they had needed a swing of 1945 proportions to oust the Tories, and that the reduction of the Conservative majority from 101 to 21 was a fine achievement. Labour had nearly climbed the mountain; one more push next time and they would surely make it. But this line of consolation fails to convince. Apart from anything else, next time the mountain will have grown even higher. The recommendations of the Boundary Commission will have been implemented by the next general election, adjusting the size and shape of many constituencies. The effect of these changes, it is generally assumed, will be to hand the Tories from fifteen to twenty extra seats without any more work.

The situation facing Labour is therefore brutal. If the Party spends eight years reorganizing itself under Neil Kinnock, outlawing the word socialism, expelling left-wing extremists, accepting the free market and the principles of nuclear deterrence, weakening the obvious links with trade unions; if the party leadership does everything to cuddle up to prospective voters made apprehensive by previous Labour attitudes; if, banker-suited and pro-Europe, they pitch themselves as a nicer, more compassionate version of the Tories; if they fight an excellent campaign, well-organized and well-publicized; if the election comes at the right time for them, in the depths of a recession, with a lot of old-lag Tories seemingly attached to power only by their fingertips; if all the polls and all the analysts agree that Labour will at least end up with a share of power; and if, when the results come in, despite an increase in seats, Labour has captured only 35 percent of the vote, and the Conservatives are just as solid on 43 percent as they were five years earlier—then the question arises as to whether Labour has become unelectable. Or at least unelectable under the present system. Perhaps jumping on Paddy’s Roundabout is the necessary solution? Whereupon a second brutal truth asserts itself: in order to change the electoral system to a new one which favors you better, you first have to win power under the old system. Which is what Labour seems incapable of doing.

What has changed? The Labour Party is like a lover who, rejected for being scruffy and high-minded by

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