First to the barricades is Peter Hain, who defines the rich not by what they earn or own but what they drink. "There's now a kind of dinner party critic who quaffs shiraz or chardonnay and just sneeringly says, 'You are no different from the Tories'," he said recently. "Most of the people in this category are pretty comfortably off; it's not going to be the end of the world if they get a Tory government. In a working-class constituency like mine, this is a lifeline. It's not a luxury." Other advocates for New Labour have slammed Labour defectors for their "bruschetta orthodoxies" and lambasted anyone who refuses to vote Labour as a result of the war as "decadent" and "self-indulgent".
We will come back to Mr Hain's constituency later. For now let us examine the basis on which New Labour and its supporters are attempting to shame the liberal bourgeoisie back into the fold in time for polling day. The substance of the allegation is pretty straightforward. Poor people need a Labour government for health, education and the minimum wage. Such things are of little consequence to the middle classes, who are preoccupied with such trivial matters as war. So the haves who seek to punish New Labour because of the dead in Falluja are selfish. By taking their votes elsewhere they will be punishing the have-nots by letting in a Tory government. In short, conscience is the preserve of the idle rich; the toiling masses have more basic needs that only Labour can fulfil.
Baseless in fact and flawed in logic, this argument marks the brazen, self-serving scaremongering of a party whose most attractive feature is not what it will do or has done but what it is not - the Conservatives. The omission of the Iraqi poor - not to mention those murdered, tortured and injured in our name - from this "lifeline" renders it morally specious. But every time Michael Howard leers from the screen such threats are newly endowed with an urgent appeal.
So first, some facts. There is as much veracity to the claim that voting for the Liberal Democrats will let the Tories through the back door as there was that Saddam Hussein was 45 minutes from killing us all. A study by the Independent revealed that a swing of 11.5% from Labour to the Lib Dems would indeed deprive Labour of its overall majority. But even if the defections were twice that rate, it would still be "virtually impossible" to let in a Conservative government. "It is highly unlikely any swing could result in the Conservatives becoming the largest party," according to John Curtice, a psephologist and professor of politics at Stratchclyde university. "The most likely consequence of any large switch from Labour to the Liberal Democrats is simply nobody would have overall control."
If this does happen it won't be because Tory Svengali Lynton Crosby has demotivated the Labour vote, but because the government has. But the fact that so many on the left feel morally compromised by voting for Tony Blair suggests not that there is something wrong with their morality but that there is something wrong with Labour. Indeed, New Labour was founded on the principle that, unlike old Labour, it had to reconnect with voters' concerns in order to win. Somewhere along the way that lesson was lost. Now the government claims any losses will not be its fault for pursuing a course that voters will reject: it will be the voters' fault for refusing to accept the course New Labour has imposed.
Each individual is responsible for the choice they make on polling day; the parties are responsible for crafting an agenda and developing a record that people will want to choose. The surest sign that a political party is in trouble is when it blames the electorate for not supporting it.
Thursday has been a long time coming and this government have had plenty of opportunity to be prepared for it. A million of us warned them on February 15 2003 when we took to the streets against the war. Many also warned them on June 10 2004, the date of the European and local elections. But nothing happened. Yet now they demand loyalty where none has been shown.
Many used their clothes pegs in 2001, after the bombing of Serbia, the asylum bill and student loans. This time round they will need blindfolds and earmuffs as well. Decadence is believing you are not accountable for the consequences of your actions. Let those accusations be laid at the doorstep of 10 Downing Street before they make their way to any mythical dinner party. For only then will it become clear that Labour's principal weakness is not middle-class petulance but working-class indifference. Its defeats in byelections at the hands of the Lib Dems have taken place not in leafy suburbs but poor urban areas such as Brent East and Leicester South. In the local council elections, they lost towns and cities like Cardiff, Doncaster, Leeds and Newcastle upon Tyne. These were hardly plots hatched last summer in Tuscany.
In all of this the war has been emblematic. The vast majority of defectors on Thursday will not switch in solidarity with the people of Sadr City. They will do so because the war has symbolised much of what is wrong with New Labour - its contempt for its constituency, and democracy delivered with arrogance and spin. "If the political context were right, people would support regime change," said Blair before the war, according to a secret document leaked to the Sunday Times.
Cook up the pretext and people will swallow it; if they don't, we'll shove it down their throats. Never mind if they gag. We know what's best for them. Trust is the currency. Having spent it on Iraq, Blair is unable to use it elsewhere.
Having failed to persuade, they must now resort to pillory. But does Jessica Haigh, the student who assailed Blair as he toured a shopping centre in Leeds, look like a dilettante to you? She grew up in a Labour-voting household and is about to cast her first vote for the Lib Dems because she is disillusioned. And what about her father, Mick, 51, a former teacher from Ramshill, Scarbor ough, who was a party member for 36 years and the election agent for his hometown's first Labour MP in 1997? Was he soused on pinot grigio when he said of his daughter: "She is doing the job that senior members of the Labour party should be doing. I think her views are shared by many in the party and those who have left."
Which brings us back to Peter Hain's constituency of Neath. If his working-class constituents are in desperate need of a Labour government, nobody seems to have told them. True, he has a 14,816 majority. But since 1997 turnout in Neath has fallen by 22.5% and his majority has slumped by 38%. If Labour gets a drubbing on Thursday don't blame the crowd at the wine bar. That'll be the beer talking.
