The thing about exposing Tories as an old-Etonianesque toffs clearly won't work.  So at least we've learnt something, except we should have learnt that from the London Mayoral election?

I still can't get head around the fact that we campaigned on ID cards.  That was meant to win votes?  And the data loss thing - so they'll trust us instead?

It's not just policy coherence and focus that's missing.  It's politics.

Of course I'm going to say that I disagree with your analysis. I do think that part of it was anger at Brown, but it's also the fact that the Tories right now have the major upper hand politically.

They made various proposals months ago and then suddenly Labour is adopting something highly similar. Immediately springs to mind is the £1 million inhertence tax threshold. Two days later Darling announces that inheritance tax for people with assets under £700,000 are now tax exempt. There's a number of other ideas and proposals by the Tories that are in the Queens Speech Brown announced the other week.

The electorate isn't stupid, they can see where the proposals and policies come from and as Rory Bremner said "Cameron has sucessfuly turned the Conservative Party into a Labour Think Tank" 

People talk about various problems with a lack of substance from the Tories, but technically this isn't the case, reading their website they have the "Agenda for Change" .pdf's littering their site which do go into depth about policy proposals, rather than definitive policy and it's those that the Tories are relying on during their elections. Or as in the council elections, are running purely on local party comittments [which my local Labour Party didn't do at it's peril]

Another thing that is turning people off is some of the high command and the front bench.

Harriet Harman said it was a "bad result" but attributed it to voters' concerns about the economy. - BBC

I disagree, a 17% swing does not necessarily equate to a singular issue such as the economy, instead it seems to be a large myriad of issues that  Tolpuddle covered, the economy is too narrow, perhaps because Labour has sat on the idea that they were ending boom and bust and were steady hands on the economy, now this isn't strictly the case as our economy, being as it is, is attached to the other large economies, we're all interlocked. If one slows down, we all do, meaning that some of the "stock phrase" isn't working any more. The concerns are much deeper as Tolpuddle has stated, fuel, costs of living, Britain tumbling down the education league tables

Another problem: Hazel Blears. 

I dislike Hazel a lot, and none of my Labour supporting friends can really say a lot good about her either. She has a highly condecending attitude and tends to immediately sneer at voters, or as last night, the Question Time audience. Her attitude really struck me as one of "We rule you" rather than "We rule for you" and it's that lack of humble attitude that is causing voters to turn off. Couple this with the latest proposals of the surveilance state [which it turns out is ineffectve] and the Policing tied down by "accountable" paperwork and folks really are beginning to dislike Labour when the Tories say they'll get rid of those problems.

Trust me, this is a lot more than Labour's "Mid Term Blues" 

My 2 pence anyhow. 

Different people may have different reasons for disillusionment, but I know many lifelong Labour voters and they tell me that what they hate about the government is, (1) its extreme authoritarian tendencies, (2) its essentially rightwing economic and social policy, and (3) its excessively pro-American slant.

42 days' detention without trial is a particularly outrageous protofascist proposal.  Labour used to be a civil libertarian party.  Hewitt and Harman are former leading lights of Liberty, the civil liberties organisation.  In the Major years it was the Tories who were considering introducing ID cards and who were constantly introducing new authoritarian policies.  Now the Labour Party seeks to advocate the failed authoritarian policies of apartheid-era South Africa.

What is the Labour Party for?  Surely, reducing inequality between rich and poor.  Yet it has failed to do so during more than a decade in power.  Inequality has risen. 

Here is a list of reasons that people have given to me for wanting to switch to the Tories:

The ID bill.

The War In Iraq.

High Taxation.

The reclassification of cannabis .

The 10% Tax fiasco.

High Council tax..

Failing to Pay the Police pay rise in full.

The destruction of pensions under Gordon Brown.

Getting rude letter from school when their children have been ill.

Children taking to many tests.

Below inflation wage rises and benefit rates.

Allowing the Housing market to overheat.

Mismanagement of the Northern Rock problem.

The complaints just go on and on. However I think you get the idea, the problem is after Ten years in power most people have a least one issue that they consider Labour has not listened to them about.

"I'd describe myself as a social liberal and have always favoured Labour over the Tories but when they decided to reclassify cannabis it was too much for me."

I can only think you've been smoking too much because this is crazy thinking which fails to grasp the reality of the political situation in this country.

The truth is it is either Labour or the Tories. You can climb on your high horse over whether this is how it should be (to those people I would say, "Join the Electoral Reform Society before you start moaning") but it IS how it is just now. The last thing we need is self-indulgent whinging from the "left" - we need activism, steadfastness and a desire to campaign for a social democrat vision from a position of strength i.e. from GOVERNMENT.

Faced with a resurgent Tory party those of a Labour persuasion (whichever flavour, because no-one would, surely, be so vain as to assume they alone are the keepers of the flame) should be rallying together and fighting for what they believe in, not taking their ball home. Such an attitude is counter-productive.

As for using the Government's decision to reclassify cannabis as a motivation for deserting them, the irony would be delicious were it not so tragic and ill-informed. Whatever the rights and wrongs of it being Class B or Class C, it was, is and will continue to be illegal (As an aside, since when has it been a socialist policy to legalise drugs? That very much IS the LIb Dems). The reality of your muddled "liberalism" will be a Tory government - and the Tories are even MORE hardline on cannabis, having argued for some time that is should be Class B (Oh, apart from Dave Cameron, who voted for it to be Class C while on the Home Affairs Select COmmittee).

As a Labour party member and an animal welfare campaigner, I can recommend several effective ways to ensure not only votes but active on the ground support from people who care about stopping cruelty.

 1 Ensure the Hunting Act 2004 is properly enforced and champion it, exposing hunter Cameron as someone who if gains power would bring back fox hunting, hare coursing and deer hunting. Setting dogs onto wild animals for so called for 'sport'.

2 Ban snares. 

3 Ban  all seal product imports (ahead of any European ban)

4 Cease support for the 'game' shooting industry. Labour's active support (fronted up by Martin Salter MP) is totally wrong for a progressive party. Killing for fun is unnaceptable and we should not be supporting it as a party. So many people across the country will not support the party because of this support of bloodsports.

Actually more country people are against setting dogs onto wild animals for 'sport' than are for it and the camapign to get the ban had and still has very big public support.

Many people voted Labour because of that one issue and even now are prepared to go the extra mile to keep Labour in power. 

The comment about 'kittens' was infantile and I will ignore it.

Do you realise the numbers of people actively supporting animal welfare organistions dwarfs the memberships of all the main poltical parties put together? 

Yes the economy is vital and yes peoples taxation etc etc is important but so is idealism for a better society and many people base their voting preferences and who they will actively campaign for on that.

At the last election I helped mobilise animal welfare campaigners to help Labour MPs in marginal seats. Those campaigners went the extra mile.

I dont see many of these ungrateful people who get tax credits, matrenity rights and many other economic benefits from a Labour government, pounding the streets at election time.

Cameron is in favout of sadism re-legalised, most decent minded people are not and the ban on hunting is one they want to see enforced (that is happening) and championed.