I last wrote about Labour's prospects after the battering the party received at the polls in May's local elections. Since then things have got worse. Economically the credit crunch, combined with rising oil and food prices, have created an outlook every bit as gloomy as this summer's weather. Politically things are just as bad. The result of the July by-election in Glasgow East was humiliating. Opinion polls carried during August gave the Conservatives a lead of between 15 and 24 points. And then you have the first open calls for the prime minister to step down, with former home secretary, Charles Clarke, saying that Labour was 'destined for disaster' if it carried on its current course. So can Labour recover? In May I said that, given certain conditions, it was possible. Today the odds of that happening have lengthened. The problem is that the Brown administration has still not sorted out vital aspects of its political strategy. There is still no compelling political narrative about the driving mission of the Government. The nearest the prime minister has come to articulating this is his argument that the UK economy is in a strong position to weather the economic storm and that the Government is on the side of ordinary families in helping them cope with these hard times. Unfortunately, the chancellor rather blew away the first argument in his notorious interview with The Guardian, and people have not yet seen enough practical measures to be convinced on the second. In addition, Labour's vision needs to be bigger and bolder. It needs to show how it wants to shape the future, as well as demonstrate competence in responding to the present.
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