Has Labour given up on winning the election?

At PMQ's last week (and subsequently on TV) we have seen some members of the Government (although some are reportedly very concerned about the strategy) using class warfare language to attack the Tories (particularly David Cameron). The Prime Minister, to laughter and applause from his own benches, hit Cameron with the line that the Conservative economic policy had been 'dreamed up on the playing fields of Eton', while another Labour MP described the Tory policy as 'an Eton Mess' (I admit, I find that one significantly more amusing).

However, what does this mean politically? Well, it appears to show that, consciously or not, Labour have written off this election. Why? Because class warfare, by definition, energises working class Labour stalwarts, while angering middle class southern and middle England. So by engaging in these kinds of attacks, Labour will probably energise their voters in the north and Scotland, and by bringing them out significantly reduce the losses in some of those areas (for example, we may well see far fewer seats north of the Watford Gap going blue than the nationwide swing ought to indicate). However, by doing so, they are turning off exactly the kind of middle class voters in the Midlands and South that they would need to win an election. If it is a conscious decision (and if it is, it is actually a very reasonable one), then Labour strategists have written off the election, and want to make sure their voters come out in the north in order to stop the kind of wipeout that happened to the Conservatives in 1997 - hopefully (in their minds) holding on to 250-odd seats, meaning that Labour can seriously challenge a Conservative Government in the following election.

Will it work? Who knows! In Scotland Labour has been beset by the Scottish Nationalists (although the SNP being in 'government' in Holyrood seems to have reduced their popularity), and the Liberal Democrats seem keen to try to pinch northern seats of Labour (which they will probably fail at). Also there have been comments from more than one commentator that it is a bit rich for Labour to drape itself in the mantle of the working class when they have been a middle class party for the last twelve years (not forgetting as well that conditions for working class Britain have declined and income inequality is worse today than since the 1960's). So whether low-income Britons will 'come home' to Labour on election day is yet to be seen.

One interesting little tit-bit on this point, is to look at polling on who minor party voters want to form the next government. BNP voters (who are predominantly disgruntled ex-Labour voters in safe Labour areas) overwhelmingly want David Cameron to form a government after the election.