MP Column | It’s All Downhill From Here

At this stage in the electoral cycle at Westminster any new government, especially one with a 160-seat majority, should be at the peak of its powers. One year in from a landslide election victory, Labour should be engaged in the breathtaking renewal and reform of a visibly dysfunctional system and doing so in a manner that lets the troublesome civil service know who is in charge now.

In the House of Commons, there should be procession of empowered bold and articulate ministers coming to the dispatch box primed with data and brimming with ideas and ambition. In the domestic sphere and on the international stage, there should at this juncture be a drumbeat of achievements and successes striving to keep up with the hyperbolic rhetoric of a government at the peak of its powers.

Instead, we must endure a dead beat Cabinet riven with infighting, a Prime Minister at his happiest when he’s grovelling at the feet of the US President and a profoundly unconvincing Chancellor of the Exchequer who within weeks of being in post had made life immeasurably more difficult for; disabled people, businesses, pensioners, farmers, GP surgeries, hospices and charities.

The harsh political reality of a majority of this size is that Labour have in their number a whole host of paper candidates who were not meant to be elected. This is especially apparent in eyes of a significant cadre of Labour MPs representing Scottish seats who still seem to be in a state of near paralysis at finding themselves in the House of Commons.

This Prime Minister is not worried about his MPs in Scotland of course. He takes them and their loyalty for granted in the same way as any UK Prime Minister takes Scotland and everything in it for granted. No, the Prime Minister is worried about the descent and disunity in his English MPs who now represent very differing parts of England. Gone is Labour’s unifying representation of inner-city England as many Labour MPs now represent towns and seats in the shires and who reveal a pronounced appetite for welfare cuts, increased defence spending and a myopic anti-immigration agenda designed to be more ‘Reform’ than Reform.

This tension will prove fatal for Labour. They possess neither the wit nor the finances to fix the tailspin they have created. And one year in, they can’t blame anyone but themselves.