As no one in here seems actually to know anyone else except from what they read in their posts, how can you know enough about a person to dismiss him with phrases like "armchair politician"?
There seems to be a certain sort of Labour apparatchik - and this was as true of "old" Labour as of New - who:
1. seems to feel that the party has some sort of natural right to rule, at least in areas where it has had some sort of historic pre-eminence - flavour of Charles I, but not many modern electors are entranced by the theory of the divine right of kings, even in a more contemporary garb.
2. sees dissent, or even honest perplexity, on the part of people who were, and still would like to be, Labour supporters as a sort of disloyalty, even a subversion, which needs to be punished and, if possible, ruthlessly extirpated, presumably because they see it as inimical to the greater cause of the Party, and destructive of the great mission that Labour has. Can't quite work out whether the best parallel to that is the Holy Inquisition or Joseph Stalin et al. OK, they can't implement "De Haeretico Comburendo" to burn you in the market place, or imprison you, or send you into internal exile, but I get the feeling that, if they could, they'd quite like to!
But supporting or joining a political party is a voluntary act. You can still say, I suppose, "I'm Labour, my family always has been", but, like it or not, that politics of the tribe is on the decline, and if, in consequence, people more and more think before they join, support or vote, how can that be other than a good thing?
If people are going to vote your way, and, even better, turn out to work for the party, surely you need to convince them, and not bawl at them - and, most of all, don't you need to re-enthuse the folk who used to be your own supporters? The stats. show that Labour membership and activism have severely declined in the last ten years, and my impression in Didsbury in May 2005 was that one of your problems was that you didn't have the people on the ground to get about the constituency putting the Labour argument over. We Lib Dems were out night after night, because, whether we won or not, we thought our case was worth making.
Labour needs to recover people who will do that, and, in here, there seem to be folk who actually seem to WANT to be convinced, who wish they could be back in the Labour fold, but just can't see their way to doing so. But instead of persuasion, argument, reasoned debate and, above all, an attempt to explore and resolve the things that have disillusioned them and deterred them from their previous support, the reflex response of the apparatchik is to slag 'em off!
I can see why they slag me off; I'm the enemy, after all - though, personally, I think that's a pretty counter-productive and dim sort of politicking even when directed against your opponents. But why, oh why, kick out at the people who want to be with you, just because there are aspects of party policy, or things that have been done, that they haven't been able to accept. I honestly can't see where that's going to get you.
