ABSTRACT
A party and a movement which forsake their original crusade for a self-satisfied role as the natural party of government risk just such rottenness at their base. The experience of government in the years after 1964 has also done much to deprive Labour of the right to equate its socialism with planning. A Labour government has acted on the Conservative belief that unemployment will fall only after the rate of inflation has been controlled. The party has been able to form governments on the basis of the decreasing votes because opposition to it is divided and because the Conservative Party has also lost voters in large numbers. The electoral system and the failure of Labour’s opponents have acted to disguise the problem. For every government will have to do business with the trade unions, and Labour has a special relationship. Even the occasional majority Conservative governments will have learned the lesson from the 1970s.
