Blair gave up on the Labour Party membership years ago when he severed their policy powers at the party conference. The problem is that the Labour government is far more centre ground than the party membership, which is why they have to ignore them.

Mind you, the increasingly powerful unions might be able to tip the balance slightly back in their favour.

The failure of this government goes back with the love affair of Thatcherism, Blair thought he could carry on with the spend borrow culture, and Brown had no idea what the hell
was going on. The drugs he was taking for his vision were not powerful enough.

We will end up with a Tory party which will basically turn back to Thatchers idea's and when labour wins again in a few decades time they will look back to Blairism, we are in for a few years of shitty politics of going back wards looking for an answer. basically because the leaders are so poor they have no idea's of their own..

I partially agree, LFaT, but the power of Party conference has often been exaggerated as the big trade union block votes nearly always rescued the leadership.

Of course, the Tories have traditionally ignored their party conference.

and for some perverse reason pins all of the blame on Gordon Brown.

Bob he has to take responsibility! Who else takes responsibility for those monumental f***-ups? This government can't even land a single punch on a bunch of Tories who are weak and shallow. That says more about this govt than it does about the Tories

Sunny, I thought I gave a hint. It is a collective failure of Ministers, not just the responsibility of Brown. And on that basis, who are you suggesting he is replaced with?

Ed Miliband. Inoffensive and much more likable (relatively)

And that, Sunny, is how we ended up with Tony Blair. If we are going to change the Leader, and I'm not arguing against that, it should be on the basis of policies, not whether Alan, Ed, Harriet or david smiles more often and more naturally.

Bob - I've argued this before: you may have the best policies in the world but if you don't have a political strategy to win power and win the public debates then there's little point from a political party's perspective.

My point here is is that you're not going to get a change in policy. The only thing we can hope for now is a change in political strategy so Tory wins are minimised.