Slide to oblivion

Whether heart-felt or tactical, this devotion will convince no-one that the government is on the right lines.

For years, new Labour has brandished one trump card over labour movement critics, claiming that only this trend, with its triangulation, neoliberalism and its overtures to big business and the rich, can win elections.

That assertion has been debatable for some time, with Labour losing about 4.5 million votes since 1997, to say nothing of more than 200,000 party members, but Thursday's loss of another 330 councillors will add to the paralysis of local party organisations and the disillusionment of remaining members.

Brown acolyte International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander illustrated his political bankruptcy by suggesting that the losses were due to global economic issues and general scepticism towards politicians.

When food prices and manufactured imports were low as a result of sharp international competition among food producers and China's low-cost industries, Mr Brown's cheerleaders credited him with achieving low inflation.

You can't have it both ways, taking credit for success and blaming world events when it goes belly up.

And what kind of generalised disillusionment with politicians expresses itself in not backing Labour while voting Tory, Lib Dem or Plaid Cymru?

Government ministers still refuse to accept the real reason why working class voters are turning their back on the party. It's because it goes right to the heart of the new Labour project.

The PM deludes himself by speculating: "Perhaps I spent too little time thinking about how we can get our arguments across to the public."

No, you spent too much time cuddling up to big business and the rich, meeting their needs rather than working people and believing that workers and the poor would continue voting Labour because they had nowhere else to go.

Instead, while many have opted out of voting, some back other parties, including, in certain specific areas, the racist BNP.

And, if Mr Brown believes that gimmicks such as cutting petrol tax, dropping higher charges for excessive refuse disposal and expanding lease-purchase housing schemes for first-time buyers will bring back the lost voters, dream on.

He talks, as he did on taking over from Tony Blair, about listening to people, but, if he is listening, he is taking no notice, because he comes out with the same old neoliberal claptrap.

If everyone else can hear working class people demanding a crash programme of council housebuilding, a higher state pension, an end to privatisation, fair pay for the public sector and public ownership of the railways, why can't the Prime Minister?

And, if he persists in his selective hearing, matters must be taken out of his hands.

Not by shifting the deck chairs on new Labour's Titanic by searching for another glib, photogenic new Labour cipher but by the trade unions working with those Labour MPs ready for change and the labour movement outside Parliament to effect a reversal of the government's disastrous slide to oblivion.