Labour is in rout. It leader lurches from self-parody to self-parody, grooving with an Elvis impersonator, quoting Don Quixote, declaring his own supporters bigots. The press has already lost interest in Labour's campaign, with much reporting now focusing on who will stand for leader post-election and who might be the caretaker in the meantime. Staunch long-term supporting papers have jumped ship.
Expect further rout this week. Labour poll support will probably fall further, even from its current low level, perhaps to consistently below 25%. On Election day one can expect a further 2-3% fall-off as Labour voters don't come out to take part in the humiliation.
The only tactical voting against Conservatives one can expect to have any effect will be Labour voters switching to the Lib Dems in certain seats. But it will be difficult to make that effective, for there is such uncertainty about how far into the Con-Lib marginals that Lib Dem surge will actually take Clegg. Similarly, on our own side it will be virtually impossible to know how to target resources usefully so as to combat the Lib Dem surge. The great likelihood is that resources are wasted defending either indefensible seats or seats where in the end it turns out there was no actual risk at all.
To secure our majority, we need to step to the next level out of Lab-Con marginals. Labour is our foe. Labour has the seats we need to take. Labour rout is where we can get them. If we can place pressure far enough into Labour's core seats, some Labour MPs that thought they had seats for life might be tempted to begin offering their own variant promises in a desperate attempt to distance themselves from the national disaster. It is possible that internal discipline will collapse entirely and recriminations will burst out into the open even before the Election. By going deep enough in, we can create signals that might allow productive tactical voting in our favour in order to get Labour out.
The Labour beast is down, and its throat is exposed. Finish it, and make a victory feast of its carcass.
