Labour's in danger of getting it wrong again

 We're in danger of getting it all wrong. Again. Good leader candidates but no one outstanding in the way Blair was or Smith before him. No clear ideas on policy. No understanding of that awkward entity the British people.

So run the party through a commission for a year to put candidates thru their paces.Understand why we lost : cos we were never going to win against a one term government. Then realise that people don't particularly want change. They just want to get.on with their lives and be better off.

The Brits don't particularly like each other and they hate scroungers so they're not as worried as U.S. About injustices to the poor. They love rising house prices because the majority are owners.They believe in piggy bank economics don,t understand Keynes and think austerity is good for other people.

They do want to be better of so they'll vote for hope but paradoxical the Tories in their panic offered more than us while we did our best to kill it and we're so ashamed of Brown we allowed all the blame to be dumped on him and made nothing of the fact that the Tories had killed the recovery he was generating

They're hardly socialist but recognise that capitalism cheats,bankers are overpaid bastards landlords charge.too.much rent and that the utilities are.run by greedy crooks so they didn't mind the policies that got us labelled anti-business .It was just that they weren't a coherent critique and didn't cancel the image of economic incompetence

So it's not back to Blair but to Crosland to develop policies which will generate growth and betterment and a surplus to spend on the NHS the sole state system they love

Don't be fooled. We're neither an aspirational  nation nor a collection of nervous altruists but a collection of tired,rather selfish nervous but dutiful dopes who want a quiet life and are too timid to do anything but cling to nurse in tough times.They're not particularly happy with the government but are all too easily scared .They haven't believed Cameron but the mini recovery and the promise of better times ahead  persuaded them into giving him another chance.When he fails to deliver on that as he will they'll come back to us but only if we offer them hope and a return to the growth they've been led to expect and always got up to 2010 rather than a load of aspirational codswallop and kindness to business soap.

So don't junk the policies to make way for a lot of touchy hopey aspirational stuff, keep pointing out that the government's politicise won't work can't work and that the nation is being made weaker.Offer hope and project the economic policies necessary to get it and we'll win. Just a little later than we'd hoped.