Former Government Minister David Burch has given his judgement on why the Progressive Labour Party lost the December 17 general election.The party simply lost sight of its core values and was distracted by the “echo chamber” of criticism about the Budget and the national debt.“People lost faith in us and we lost our way in terms of our core beliefs and our core values,” he told Bermuda Broadcasting Company’s Tari Trott last week.“By that I mean — the current government talks about balancing the Budget and concern about debt and you should be. But in a Labour party, you set those issues aside when it comes to balancing the Budget versus helping people who are in need.“And to some extent we lost our way in that regard, in the sense that people in this country were hurting, people in this country needed help, and we did not provide that help. We listened to the echo chamber — people criticising about the debt and of course those are things that you want to be concerned about, and there are things that you want to try and address, but you do not, in my opinion, balance the Budget on the backs of people suffering. You don’t.”Col Burch said he was not concerned about the party’s possible demise, and that there was no comparison with the United Bermuda Party which began a slow slide into oblivion when it lost the 1998 election.“UBP had no core beliefs other than making money. Nothing bound them together other than power,” he saidHe said the new Government was doing “pretty good” but had “boxed themselves in on some pretty petty things,” like the policy on GP cars.“Clearly you want to manage the use of GP cars, and have some guidelines in place about their use, but you don’t cut of your nose to spite your face,” he said.“I think you are going to have a relaxing of that policy as you go forward, because from a practical point of view, what country do you know of where you have the officers of the highest echelon in the country have GP cars which are off bounds to Ministers.”Col Burch contested the Warwick North Central seat against Wayne Scott but lost by ten votes.