Will Labour never learn?

By now, Labour should be rather good at post-defeat inquests. Plenty have been conducted over the years and the drill has become familiar. The party goes into an election promising a certain vision of the future only to find out that it leaves the voters cold. A senior figure is then commissioned to state the obvious, and the report is sent back to the leader’s office, where it is filed and ignored. Then the party embarks upon a fresh misadventure — and the cycle of defeat begins again.

This week Labour is digesting its worst result in Scotland since 1918, having lost not only to the nationalists but to the Tories. In England’s council elections, Labour lost 18 more seats than it gained, which sounds like fairly decent damage limitation — until you remember that no opposition has lost seats mid-term since the 1980s. In Wales, Labour saw Ukip hoover up the working-class protest vote.