This is pretty good article. Bragg is right to concentrate on the police and race, the one area that's very important where Ken will probably make a difference.
Overall though, I think this unfortunately is less of a defeat for New Labour than people generally think. It's not only that, as mid-term losses go, this one is extremely mild. In most midterm routs, the opposition party looks like it at least presents a threat to take over the government at the next election. Here there's no sign of that at all. Amazingly, Labour is still polling higher numbers at the national level than it won at the last election.
But the other thing to keep in mind is Blair's priorities. It's true that he's a control freak that would like to win every election at every level. But given a choice between winning local elections and purging his left wing, it's more important to him to purge his left wing. And that the Livingstone election has done magnificently. It's the same thing he did in Wales. It looks like madness at first when he opposes himself to a very popular Labour candidate. It not only ruins Labour's chances of an easy win, it displays all his most dictatorial qualities, which gains the candidate additional sympathy votes. But Blair's position is that the Left wing of the party cannot ever again be permitted to win. If he has a choice between the Left wing of labour winning, and another party to its left winning, he clearly prefers the latter.
Blair's reasoning is that he wants Labour cemented in the middle. He thinks that in that way he can stay the natural party of government. And if the left wing and/or nationalist groupings are local parties (or independent candidates), so much the better, because then there is little chance they will ever unite to form a serious national threat. Blair's grand strategy is that devolution, properly managed, can keep Britain's 2 and a half party system in its present shape, with Labour the one whole party, half a grouping of parties to its left, half a party to its right, and half a party in the coalition. That way, devolution can be a means of strengthening the grip of central goverment and the grip of New Labour both by fragmenting the opposition. And so far, that's pretty much what is happening. The future may be different, of course. But Livingstone's victory, no matter how much it hurts Blair's vanity (which is a pleasure, admittedly), doesn't yet threaten that strategy at all. In a certain sense, it's a victory for Blair, albeit one that he has payed dearly for. He's been fighting Livingstone tooth and nail since Labour took office. And now he's finally and irrevocably out of the party -- the most charismatic figure on the Labour left, the man it's been rallying round.
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com