Reading the Compass pressure group's pre-Brighton conference warning that Gordon Brown could be leading "the last Labour government ever" is a good example of what the American baseball star, Yogi Berra called "deja vu all over again." Especially when the claim was harnessed to a bit of special pleading.
One reason for Harold Wilson's strange and sudden resignation as Labour PM in 1976 (no, it isn't going to happen this week) was said to be that he'd seen too many problems come round and round, then round again. Likewise predictions that party x or y is really finished this time.
No wonder that Alistair "Quiet Man" Darling, the chancellor who kept his nerve, has finally got cross enough to denounce defeatism in today's Observer. Is it a conference or is it a wake? If a wake, what will they do for an encore next year?
You see? Defeatism is evident everywhere. That is precisely the kind of joke the chancellor would have taken out and shot if he was that sort of bloke. He's right, of course. As Berra said: "It ain't over 'til it's over." Yogi also said: "Never answer an anonymous letter."
I'm old enough to remember the mid-60s, when the likes of Telegraph pundit Peregrine Worsthorne (happily still trouble-making at 85), predicted an end to the Conservative tradition as Wilson swept all before him – or seemed to do until he lost in 1970.
Why are there no conservative intellectuals, mused Sir Perry. Within a decade there were wall-to-wall conservative intellectuals, many not very conservative at all, ex-Trots and communists, some of them. Before you could say "Milton Friedman", Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were rolling back the post-war consensus.
Then it was Labour's turn to be unelectable. In fairness, the party did its best. In 1980 it elected Michael Foot as a unifying party leader, promptly split, and lost the election badly. Neil Kinnock spent nine years putting the party back together again just in time for Tony Blair to cash in – at a time when the Tories decided it was their turn to fall apart.
It doesn't take long for the doomsters to say: "They'll never get back from this defeat." They're saying it about Labour this time even before it has lost. They said it in 1951 too. Sometimes parties recover quickly, sometimes it takes time.
Nick Clegg would argue – did argue in his "Liberal Moment" pamphlet last week – that his party blew it after the Lloyd George-Asquith split of 1916, dipped to five MPs in 1951 (when Churchill offered the Liberal leader a cabinet post) and has now recovered to the point where it could soon overtake Labour, as Labour did the Liberals after 1923.
Maybe. No party has a God-given right to exist and both of Britain's main parties have been losing votes and members since 1951 when they took – as I recall – around 95% of the vote between them.
Compass argues that Labour faces three very specific threats in 2010-11: that its 349 seats could be reduced to a rump of 130 if David Cameron's poll lead still exists on election day; that an English Tory majority at Westminster could help the SNP swing independence for Scotland, meaning Labour would lose all its Scottish seats; and that Cameron would legislate to outlaw Labour's financial ties with the unions.
Quite a lot of ifs to that script, which turns out to have a motive. Compass is among those groups and individuals lobbying for a referendum – attached to the election – on introducing PR elections for parliament, as they have arrived elsewhere in elective Britain.
It's a "game changer", a chance to avoid crushing defeat by motivating pro-PR voters and to avoid the "strong chance" of never winning another full majority, says Compass. Others are giving Brown similar advice.
Well, perhaps, but I am looking at an opinion poll ahead of today's German elections, which are conducted on the party list version of PR. It shows the CDU/CSU of Angela Merkel, still the favourites on 35%, the SPD on 25%, the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) on 14%, with the Greens and the left – the breakaway Linke party – sharing 22% roughly equally between them.
We'll know the result by the morning, but those figures don't seem to be doing the left much of a favour – a three-way split, not counting the free market FDP, yes? I remain a PR-sceptic.
Never mind. In a weekend when reports surfaced (again, Yogi) that Hitler didn't die in the Berlin bunker at all (he's still alive, I knew it!) anything can happen.
In weekend interviews Ed Balls, Alan Johnson and David Miliband made ambiguous noises about the leadership vacancy which – sorry about this, Mr Darling – may exist after the election. And the Sunday Times wrenched Peter Mandelson's words from their moorings to generate a headline suggesting he's keen to get a job from the Tories. I doubt that, don't you?
All silly really, but we will hear much more in the days ahead. As Yogi Berra said: When you come to a fork in the road, take it." Hitler for party leader, anyone?
