A CONVOCATION OF CASSANDRAS?

It's a lovely turn of phrase. the kind of thing I used to dream up in my days as a Diarist for the Manchester Evening News. However, today's piece in the Guardian on "Labour's Death Row" was a bit of a misrepresentation of the LRC "Not The Labour Party Conference" rally held on Monday night.
I see no point in pretending this was a major triumph. We got about 60 activists out in a very large ballroom where in previous years the numbers would have been in the hundreds.
The same was true of ALL events this year at Conference. Attendance was down, the mood was sombre.But unlike some events, the LRC rally told the truth. And it's dire.
For at least the past two years, and probably more, we have warned of a Government "sleepwalking to disaster" because it refuses to change direction.
Repeatedly, the LRC has outlined the policies needed to bring back voters. The need for honesty. The challenge of admitting some things were wrong - and that they needed to be put right. The People's Charter, endorsed at the TUC Congress, would be a bold step away from the likelihood of a Tory Government.
Instead, Conference saw speaker after speaker claiming we had a "great story to tell" and that somehow we could win back voters' trust by repeating the same tired old mantras. And hoping that past policies would somehow transmogrify into present day successes.
But the game is up. And, much as I loved the pictures of Tony Woodley tearing up the Sun on stage, the truth is that the union leaders have colluded in the conspiracy of denial which is seemingly, inevitably, leading to a General Election defeat.
As Mark Serowtka said on Monday night, Gordon Brown could still come back from the brink of disaster by taking on the bankers, rallying round the public sector workers, scrapping the Sun-led agenda , and fessing up that it's time to turn left in the interests of the vast majority of working-class people. Instead, the spin doctors thought that wheeling on the wife to tell everyone how great Gordon is would somehow turn things round.
Now the vile Sun newspaper has ditched Labour, perhaps those in the Downing Street bunker will realise it is five minutes to midnight and they have one last chance to claw back from the abyss. If they don't, as Alan Simpson put it, Gordon Brown is a "dead man walking" And in 12 months time, when we gather in Manchester, the numbers will be even more decimated - and we will be in Opposition