THE SUREST WAY TO LOSE AN ELECTION IN THE ANGLOSPHERE...:

 The blow this election has dealt to Labor's confidence and sense of purpose would be hard to exaggerate.

After Tony Blair's third-way centrism was impaled on the spike of Iraq, Gordon Brown moved Labour a bit to the left, then  Miliband moved it more. He struck an anti-business, anti-finance tone and proposed left-pleasing measures such as rent controls and higher taxes on the rich. To be sure, this was not "Old Labour." Core Blairite principles such as fiscal conservatism and market-driven prosperity weren't overthrown. But voters suspected, perhaps, that they might be.

Kinnock reportedly greeted Miliband's appointment as leader in 2010 by saying, "I've got my party back." That comment, one can now see, foretold disaster and should have caused weeping in Labour HQ -- because Kinnock's Labour Party was optimized for losing elections. 

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