Could today mark the end of Labour as a political force?

Today it is likely that Labour will have a major drubbing in the local and European elections. They are likely to be third place in the local elections and third or even fourth in the European elections. It sounds bad, but don't Governments find themselves in these positions after a long while in power? Well, yes, they do - but is today likely to be different?

Possibly. I'm not sure what Labour stands for any more. What is their purpose? Even in the dark days of the Tories, when their message was pretty confused, it was still possible to discern that they stood for sound money, responsibility and free enterprise. What made it really difficult for the Tories was that Labour also appeared to stand for these values, they had moved onto the Tory position.

Now, it appears that the "New" Labour values died with Tony Blair, and were a sham anyway. Although they talked about sound money or "prudence", they acted like money was no object. The old adage that all Labour Governments run out of money in the end has been shown to be as true today as it was in the 70s.

When they mentioned responsibility they meant state responsibility. The state is now responsible for huge amounts of the employment whilst the welfare state is responsible for thousands living off taxpayers money without any inclination to earn a living.

Their commitment to the free market and enterprise died when they manufactured a situation in which Railtrack could be forced to go bust, followed by vast nationalisation of the banks.

So now the wallpaper has been stripped from the New Labour project, what's left? The Blairites seem to be floundering around. The old Labour party still exists as a rump within the existing Government, jumping around with glee that RBS is now 70% owned by the taxpayer.

The Labour coalition is threatening to break up under the strain, it is conceivable that the Blairites could split and forge an alliance with the Lib Dems and the Labour party reverts to its old values and becomes a party of Government no more.

It will take someone of great stature to hold Labour together after the meltdown, and someone will need to imprint some new values on the party for it to survive. I cannot see anyone in the current crop able to do that.

For today, vote any party except Labour, the Lib Dems and BNP. All those parties which promised a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and then reneged on their manifesto promise should be punished. And obviously the BNP is beyond the pale.

Squiffy.