For many years after its 1997 defeat the Conservative Party failed to understand what had happened to it. Too many Conservatives believed not only that the voters had made a terrible mistake, but that the voters themselves would come to realise this and flood back in remorse. Meanwhile, the Tories just needed to stick to their guns. History records the success of this theory in the results of the 2001 and 2005 general elections.
I thought it would be interesting to find out whether the Labour Party is about to make the same mistake. Why does the Labour movement think it lost, and what does it think it needs to do to win again? And how does its view compare with that of swing voters, who supported Labour in previous elections but did not vote for Gordon Brown?
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