With a British general election schedded for May 3 or earlier, the party machine is geared to turn out again those who gave us victory in 1997 -- traditional Labor voters and those who voted Labor for the first time -- to win that elusive second term. Yet this is not enough. We must also win the battle to replace the Tories as the natural party of government.
To do this we must take the offensive. Labor's weak point in 1997 was liberal voters in rural seats. It makes no long-term sense to continue to meekly surrender large swaths of rural Britain to the Liberal Democrats. Voters must be offered the real thing rather than an inferior substitute.
There is a myth that in the southwest the Liberal Democrats are the main contenders to the Tories. So if you hate the Tories you have to vote tactically for the second-rate Liberal Democrats. Not so. In 1931, the Independent Labor Party came within a few hundred votes of winning North Cornwall. Since then it was not until 1979, during Labor's civil war, that the Liberals outperformed Labor. Eighteen years later, Labor is back in second place with 15 seats, one more than the Liberal Democrats.