Election gains down to Tory tiger digesting the Lib Dems
From: Frank R McManus,
Longfield Road, Todmorden.
I AM writing this letter on May 11 as an 87-year-old Labour councillor in his final hours of “injury time” after not seeking re-election.
Disappointed as I am by our poor headway at the general election, I stress that the Tory gains and small clear majority were solely due to swallowing their Lib Dem coalition “co-delinquents”, Nick Clegg’s part in 2010 now seen as akin to that of the “young lady of Riga who went for a ride on a tiger” (they came back from the ride with the lady inside, and a smile on the face of the tiger).
Between Labour and Tory there were 10 gains each way, but Labour went ahead a little via a dozen wins from Lib Dems. Of course our losses to the SNP eclipsed such detail; but the Scots are our allies, willy-nilly, in seeking to evict Mr Cameron from No. 10.
We should have refrained from attacking our helpmates, and I rue Labour’s alienation of Scottish support via “control freakery” such as the recent sacking by our London HQ of Scottish Labour’s secretary; sheer folly after last year’s referendum!
I accordingly disagree with Mark Casci’s article ( The Yorkshire Post, May 11) and I stress that the result wasn’t “disastrous” – except for the deprived.
From: Peter Neal, Oxford Court, Cleethorpes.
SO the most interesting General Election for years is over. Ed Miliband has presided over the worst General Election result for the Labour Party since 1987 when another lame duck leader, Neil Kinnock, failed to prevent Margaret Thatcher from completing an historic third term. Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls epitomised the incompetence of his Party’s economic message by losing his Morley and Outwood seat. Ironically, it was before an audience for Question Time in Leeds that the hapless Ed Miliband refused to acknowledge that his party grossly overspent in government resulting in the largest deficit in living memory (Grant Woodward, The Yorkshire Post, May 14).
The lack of a coherent economic policy has undoubtedly been instrumental in the demise of the Labour Party but the strategy that Lynton Crosby adopted proved to be decisive. As the Labour Party remains in the wilderness for years to come, the Conservatives have been entrusted to steer the country on a course that will see the deficit obliterated and the economy allowed to prosper.