Elections are fun provided you don't actually lose, and there's been a good deal to enjoy in the aftermath. The pollsters were wrong, as were almost all the pundits, and seeing them flop around like a fish on the bank has been a compelling spectacle. The ones who did call it correctly may well have just been lucky, but nonetheless hats off to Dan Hodges, a former UNITE official now writing for the Torygraph, who has said consistently for the last couple of years that the Tories would win, and had a convincing explanation to back his prediction up.
So why did Labour lose? I don't know, and neither do you. No-one does.But that doesn't stop every pundit with an opinion having a pop, from the gleeful Right to the lamenting Left.
When I think of the time I could have spent reading why-oh-why comment pieces in the Guardian, I shudder at the terrible waste of it all. Labour was too Left wing, say some. Labour was too Right wing (yes, I know) say others. It was all the fault of the Tory press. It was the BBC's fault. It was the fault of first-past-the-post.
Not many have pointed out the obvious. On the whole people voted Tory because they preferred that party's policies to those of the others. Labour can either choose to be more like them, or try and persuade their voters that they're wrong and hope that events in the next five years vindicate them.
Whatever, this was a disastrous election for Labour. The Tories, thwarted in the last Parliament by the Lib Dems (remember them?), will now implement the Boundary Commission report. That will give them at least 20 more MPs in the next parliament than they would otherwise have got. Moreover when Cameron steps down in 2018 or 19 they will probably elect Boris.
I'm not amongst the Mayor of London's fans, but it's hard to see where Labour can find someone as telegenic or popular. Chuka Umuna is a smoothie, but how would he play north of Watford? David Miliband might be persuaded out of retirement - we'll find out shortly - but even he, with ten times more gravitas than his brother - can come across as cold and cerebral. The one figure the Tories might have feared, Dan Jarvis, has just announced that he won't run. The rest are not outstanding. Andy Burnham will be perceived as a Union puppet, and anyway resembles a minor character in Thunderbirds. Yvette Cooper is a bit dull; Liz Kendall is bright but untested. The Tories must be laughing their heads off.
Mervyn King, former governor of the Bank of England, said that whoever won in 2010 would be out of office for a long time thereafter. He turned out to be wrong, but nevertheless this was an election Miliband junior should have won. The Tories inherited an economy with a galloping deficit which they had to bring under control, and although public spending carried on rising, ring-fenced areas meant some departments had to make deep cuts. But Labour still lost.
One thing of which you can be absolutely certain. It won't occur to many Labour politicians or supporters that they might have been wrong, and that the other lot (and the people who voted for them), might have been right. I think Labour is in a terrible bind because a Social Democratic party, whose raison d'etre is spending a lot of money on services, has nowhere to go when "There is no money left". The electorate doesn't find credible Labour's cries for more spending funded by yet another levy on bankers' bonuses.
So two predictions. One, unless there is some Black Swan event that none of us can predict, the Tories will win again in 2020 or thereabouts. Two, that whoever is leading Labour at the time will resign and be replaced by Sir Keir Starmer, newly elected MP for Holborn St Pancras. You read it here first.
PS Writing 5 months later, I see I never contemplated that Labour might elect Jeremy Corbyn. But then neither did anyone else at this stage. Certainly not Mr Corbyn himself. Tories have been gleeful about his election, but I wonder. Five years is a hell of a long time in politics. Unlike a more mainstream candidate, Mr Corbyn could well come unstuck before 2020, and at the next election Boris or George could find themselves facing Sir Keir across the despatch box. He would be a formidable opponent.
