S**t, we lost, was my first thought.  But I wasn't too surprised. We delayed in selecting the candidate and worse, there appeared to have been no canvass returns in the constituency. 

We need to face this fact - the next election will be a air war versus ground war one, and we've already lost the air war and there's nothing we can do about it. Gordon Brown isn't very good at presentation, and even if we replaced him, his successor would be dogged by problems in the international economy. Besides, the press has simply decided that they want a change in government, and there is nothing we can do to change their minds.

However, we do need to remember that we've faced a hostile right-wing press most of the last century and still managed to get elected nine times, thanks to an effective ground war.

The most important thing to understand about ground wars is that it's impossible to win them in three weeks flat even if you pour hundreds of activists into the constituency. For starters your opponents are doing the same and the air war is on their side. A good ground war takes at least a year, usually longer, to have an effect because it takes a while to build up a rapport with voters. 

The problem with Glasgow East and Crewe and Nantwich before it, was that the local MP's and parties had been lazy and had simply not done regular canvassing and leafletting for years. Neither constituency had canvass returns for instance, so it was guesswork as to where the Labour supporters were. Even when Labour people are found, last minute work will not get a voter to turn out, if they've been neglected for years and had their head filled with anti-Labour stuff from the press.
 
MP's leaving parliament for their constituencies this summer should spend their time banging on doors and getting their canvass returns up to scratch. Sitting around in tea-rooms feeling sorry for themselves won't cut it. Wasting time gossiping in tea-rooms all these years instead of canvassing has contributed to this mess.

We've all had a wonderful time these last fourteen years simply cruising in the slipstream of the national New Labour machine. The machine is broken now though, and we're not going to get it back barring some miracle (and miracles don't happen in real life). It's only old-fashioned graft of the sort hardly any of us recall, that will get the MP's back into parliament.

So the lesson is we all need to get out in our local constituencies and get our canvass returns up to scratch ASAP.  Some in the press are already talking about the Labour party being Obliterated. Obliteration is a serious word - it's no longer about the survival of New Labour, it's about Labour itself. But Labour will only be obliterated if constituency members on the ground allow it to happen by not doing old-fashioned politics on the doorstep. If we want the Labour party to survive, it's all in the hands of us the members, independently of what national government does.