It's No Accident

Labour's landslide victory in 1997 was caused by several factors:

• public disillusionment with 18 years of Tory rule
• Labour being able to woo enough middle class voters
• the Tories having made themselves virtually unelectable (something which has kept them out of power since)
• confident working class and middle class voters/supporters coming out to vote for Labour

Disillusionment with Tony Blair is part iconoclasm on the part of the Left and the Right/Tories and part frustration with the Labour government itself. Since coming to power Labour MPs and apparatchiks have been involved in sleaze, scandal, stripping the nation of publicly owned assets, and worst of all -- implementing authoritarian, anti-socialist Tory policies (amongst other things).

People can't face up to the idea that the Labour Party in power is not what they idealised when they voted them in (and again and again).

It adds up to people voting for the Tories because they haven't been in power and people think they "deserve another chance", they're seducing voters with populist positions, they're Tories so you at least expect them to be money-grabbing public schoolboy tossers whereas Labour's social democrats, former CPGB members, former Marxists, Christian socialists, etc. are hypocrites who're completely enamoured by anyone with money (c.f. cash-for-peerages scandal, Teresa Jowell mortgage scandal, etc.) and so divorced from the values and democratic aspirations of Labour voters that they're disillusioned.

Plus there are all the wankers who think that getting rid of Labour/Blair would be a "bloody nose" for New Labour/the Labour Party. A case in point being the "Time To Go" protest being organised by the Stop The War coalition. Tony Blair goes, so what?

Labour are in the process of making themselves unelectable and making the Tories seem like the more stable and more respectable party.

With many Westminster system countries the largest opposition party often plays a truly loyal opposition role, they go after the ruling party not on ideology as much as on efficiency, cohesiveness, etc. So the more Labor can't keep it's house in order the more the Tories can make a case that they'll rule better. In fact the Tory leader said as much recently: he said he's visiting heads of State while Labor leaders are arguing with each other and resigning.