Will election defeat mean another re-alignment of the left?

If the Tories win the next election, what will happen to the Labour party? After the last defeat in 1979, the Labour party marched leftwards and the right wing split off to form the SDP. Only when the Labour party ditched the left-wing ideology did it become electable again.

The Tories also had a similar problem in 1997, but the issue which split the party was Europe, not a whole left-right divide. This, they have largely patched up internally with the right winning out.

The newspapers are now beginning to outline a battle for Labour's soul, with an old
left-right divide emerging. The left in the form of Harriet Harman and Jon Cruddas and returning to old ways and seeing class war and equality as the way to fight. The right in form of Frank Field and Alan Milburn are looking at individual freedoms.

We'll only know which one will win after the next election. But will the other wing be content to be carried along? I don't think so. The left have been waiting for a resurgence for so long, and to go further to the right would not sit well. I don't think the right would go along with a left-wing bias either as they would know that it is electoral suicide.

Personally, I think that the party will head left with many members on the right heading towards the LibDems and some even crossing the floor directly to the Tories. In a short time, the LibDems could supplant Labour as the main opposition, and the country would head back to the Tory/Liberal battle lines drawn at the beginning of the last century. Maybe the 20th Century will be seen as an aberration from the norm.

Could be true?

Squiffy.