In a spirit of idle weekend speculation, I offer you the following thought: Perhaps the Labour Party will never (say for at least two generations) win a British General Election again.
Here's the kind of thought process. After the 1967 devaluation crisis and the events of the 1970s - (for those with short enough memories to forget the economic failings of earlier Labour governments) the Labour Party had a very bad reputation on the economy. This reputation told against them in the 1980s, even in periods in which the Conservative Party was very unpopular itself. It took an enormous effort for them to re-establish credibility, really only doing so with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown - even then there was quite a bit of skepticism until they finally came into office (much of Gordon Brown's early positive reception was probably relief as much as anything else).
Blair's government may not have been perceived as doing much else good (and doing quite a few things bad), but it was thought to have run the economy well (or at least not screwed it up). By 2005 this was all it really had going for it, but that was still enough to win a General Election.
But now it turns out that that was all an illusion, and they've actually brought about a terrible recession and the destruction of the economy as we had understood it.
Given how difficult it was for the Labour Party to re-establish its credibility the previous time, how will anyone in the future be able to restore the Labour Party's credibility on the economy? If even Blair and Brown screwed up the economy, which Labour leaders will be able to persuade the voter that they will not do the same?
And it's actually worse than this. For in the past, even if it had screwed up on the economy, the Labour Party had a core ideological support. But Blair showed them that even 180-seat majority Labour governments were not going to do the things that Socialist intellectuals wanted. The Labour Party just isn't the vehicle for Socialist intellectual ideas.
In fact, it's even worse than that. For Labour has long held many seats in Wales and Scotland. But if it seems it is unlikely to be able to hold UK governmental office, it may be annihilated by the SNP and Plaid Cyrmu.
It seems to me that we are likely to enter a period of overwhelming Conservative dominance for the next fifteen to twenty years. The Labour Party will probably collapse. Some parts of it will join us. Some will become an assortment of anti-Capitalist concepts - radical socialists, greens, communitarians, and others. Others (at least amongst the voters) may swell the ranks of a newly-respectable BNP.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives in government will be forced to develop their own post-Capitalist theory of the economy. Government spending will exceed 50% of GDP, and for the other half of the economy the major directer of investment capital will be the State through the nationalised banks. It is quite plausible that the UK government's control over the economy will exceed that of near-Eastern European Warsaw Pact economies in the Soviet era. In government, Conservatives may have only limited scope to change any of this and will probably not be inclined to do so anyway.
Instead, Conservatives will, as I said, devise their own post-Capitalist concept - "moral capitalism" or "post-debt-capitalism" or something. Islamic finance will probably feature, as may local banks and local competition authorities. External trade with other countries is clearly set to collapse (it has already done so - some will come back, but probably not on the same scale as before for many years), and in addition there is likely to be less internal trade between parts of the UK (e.g. London and Newcastle). It will be very tempting for Conservatives in government to go with the flow of these developments, regulating in favour of them, devising regional and industrial policies that run with the flow of these developments, and instructing the State banks to lend on these bases.
How will the Conservative hegemony end? There are two main scenarios. In one scenario, the left formulates a coherent more radically anti-Capitalist concept and finds a political vehicle that can make it plausible. In the other scenario, the Conservative Party eventually splits between those that regard "moral capitalism" as a transitional measure before we can return the economy to private capitalism in due course (the reactionaries) and those that rather like moral capitalism once it is in place and wish to maintain it.
That may be the battle in 20 years time. But for the shorter term, there must be a good chance that we will witness the, perhaps slow and drawn out, but perhaps rather rapid, death of the Labour Party.
