Don’t Panic - Organise and Change.

Okay, by now the awful realisation that Boris is the elected Mayor of London, the BNP have a seat on the Assembly and also that the Labour Party nationally lost hundreds of seats last Thursday has sunk in and it was not just some horrible nightmare.

While I think that the Party needs to recognise that it was well beaten on Thursday, I think we need to stand back a little and think things through before we do anything too daft. Things do need to change. But we need to recognise that it was not that long ago that Labour was ahead in the polls, Gordon walked on water and Cameron was facing plots against his leadership. How things change. Such is politics.

The Tories are trying to recapture the centre ground. In London and elsewhere we need to find a way of drawing back those voters who backed Boris while re-engaging with that core Labour vote who just either didn’t vote or instead voted for extremists. The 10p income tax debacle, below inflation public sector pay and the failure to protect agency workers are to my mind fairly obvious home goals. There is also the issue that the Tory machine appears to be able to organise a higher turnout in the suburbs of their supporters than we can. If we could have matched their turnout in the inner city what would have been the result?

I think that one of the positive things about the modern day Labour Party and Government is that it is interested in retaining power. It will gauge its strengths and weaknesses and is rightly willing to change tactics and policies to keep itself in government. Okay, we might have taken a nasty beating and change is difficult. We need not only to listen but to act. However, it will be a difficult balancing trick since we must not jettison everything. While we need to retain a mixed economy there does need to be a different emphasis. The goal of social justice must be an objective not just an aspiration. The present day threat from of a "One Nation" Cameron Britain, will surely push this process. However, we must not panic and let them dictate the path we must take.