In denial?

I am tempted to wonder if this guy is for real. Here is Lord Gould, the PM's polling expert, explaining in The New Statesman how Labour nearly won the Scottish election campaign:

This was a campaign that showed Labour at its best: Tony Blair magnificent, leading from the front, finding exactly the right words, always able to change the political weather. Gordon Brown like a tank, indomitable, raging against the possibility of defeat, generating ideas and implementing them with an energy that was breathtaking. Douglas Alexander, pathologically determined to win, displaying that infuriating determination of purpose that is the mark of great campaigners. And Jack McConnell, so often criticised, but who never showed the slightest loss of nerve, in the end finding a street-fighting demeanour that made Salmond's helicopter tours look arrogant and presumptuous.
There were many besides and all were, in their own way, heroic, brought together by that extraordinary glue that new Labour campaigning has at its core: a courage that will not allow for the possibility of defeat. Whatever else can be said of Blair and Brown, they do not lack guts. No news, however bad, unnerves them. Even after it was announced that we had lost, they still believed something could be done...
From now on Labour will strengthen, and the Tories inexorably weaken. Last week was a turning point, for Labour not David Cameron. Not a bad legacy for Blair and Brown's last campaign.

If this campaign was Labour "at its best", then I would hate to see them at their worst. A campaign that was desperately slow to get off the ground, a campaign that constantly swithered between the politics of fear and Mr McConnell's defence of his record, a campaign where the London and Scottish leaderships were and remained at odds, a campaign where the Labour party HQ was out-thought and out-manoeuvred by its SNP equivalent. But never mind, it will be better next time - Lord Gould says so.