Letter to Guardian on Labour`s defeat

"Distracted" ten times? (The undoing of Ed Miliband,04/06/15)  The fact that the decision for "Labour`s six election pledges" to be carved into an "8ft 6in slab of limestone" only "got through 10 planning meetings" because the advisers "were all distracted" by the Tories` tactics, beggars belief. How many last-minute voting decisions were made, how many Tory seats saved, on account of their failure to pay attention? Presumably, they were also "all distracted" when they agreed to patronise half the electorate with their pink mini-bus, or when they failed to cope with Crosby`s "trademark black cat strategy"? That some of them "confessed a lingering admiration" for such an obvious Tory response to Labour`s "non-dom proposal", says it all.

    Sadly, Labour leaders do not appear to have learned their lesson; with so many Tory "distractions", like "a recovery running out of steam", and warnings from the OECD about "public spending being slashed back too fast", the Labour leadership candidates prefer to concentrate on bickering about their pro-business credentials and their "southern middle-class aspiration and northern working-class solidarity(George Osborne is free at last - free to indulge his ideological zeal and his political cunning; The age of machine politics is over.But it thrives in the Labour party,05/06/15). They seem oblivious to the devastating damage done to the party`s election prospects by the last leadership campaign. How ironic, then, that the challenge to the nonsense about "compassionate conservatism" and "one-nation" Toryism is being led, not by them, but by Miliband, the ex-leader they are so keen to disparage (Miliband` questions Cameron`s one-nation stance,05/06/15) He, at least, realises that, with Osborne free to unleash his political vandalism on the welfare state, it is essential that Labour does not allow him to get away with it unscathed, particularly as the Tory propaganda machine is already preparing for 2020.