Victory and austerity.

I know my reader doesn't like it when I get political, but a comment on Iain Dale's blog today led me to this . ( see bald figures below)
I have long held this is the sort of territory we will be in, in particular that the LibDems will be well down from where they are. I think ID is entirely wrong about them.
Even in Scotland Labour will only be voted for by the tied client estate they have created. In the same way that Heath Conservatives were neither one thing nor the other, Blair NuLabourites were neither fish nor fowl.
I don't in any way take from the magnificent chicanery and political nous which won Blair 3 elections - that's what politics is about, unfortunately. But we are seeing a return to core values by Labour in a desperate attempt to stave off defeat. The Tories tried the same thing in 1997 and 2001 and learnt a very harsh lesson.
You need a broad church to govern any country nowadays - even Iran, which looks to be going to go pop in the not too distant future.
But, as the American cousins say, here's the thing.
People want a quiet life with better things for themselves and their children. Blair promised it and made huge numbers think he could give them " the third way". That's bollocks. Actually, there's only one way.Whenever parties move from that agenda, and start thinking they should tell us what to do,they get eventually get thwacked.
It's a pity we had to have Brown destroying UK Plc to prove it.
PS
Whilst in Ireland recently, a roving Church of Ireland priest asked me if I thought the Tories would win. I replied that I was sure they would.
" What a pity" he said. " Thousands will be worse off."
" That hasn't happened in Ireland, when you returned to common sense in your recent budget?"
" Er... yes."
In Ireland, of course, it was all the EU money that made the "Celtic Tiger", and that money is now going to Eastern Europe.
The EU made promises to the Irish Electorate to get them to change their vote about Lisbon, but it will make no difference. Ireland, as my friends there insist, is bust for a generation.
And Labour has stolen our rights, our money, our pensions, our freedom and will pay the price.
PPS
David Blackburn in the Speccie reports James Purnell like this :
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. The third way learned the lessons of Labour's mistakes in the 70s and 80s. But it elevated avoiding mistakes to an ideology. It wasn't confident enough where it was right, or sceptical enough where it was wrong.’

Conservatives
431
+217
Labour
152
-192
Liberal Democrats
30
-33
Scottish National Party
11
+5
Plaid Cymru
5
+3
Others
3