Politics (and other political stuff)

mb134

4,163

09 May 2021, 1:39 am #1,258

(08 May 2021, 10:22 pm)Adrian Its quite easy to play the blame game with Corbyn, but the Labour results since 1997 follow a downward trend. 2017 was the exception, where the Party gained a vote share similar to that which resulted in a comfortable majority in 2001.

To blame the 'very left' of the Labour Party is quite naïve. Labour started to lose the Midlands, Wales, Scotland and the North East again from 2005. Further losses in 2010, followed by 40 seats lost in Scotland in 2015 (thanks largely to the decision to side with the Tories in the indyref vote), although others picked up due to the Liberal Democrat vote collapsing.

In the North East in particular, and in working class people’s minds, Labour is associated with either facilitating it or not fighting the deindustrialisation and almost abandonment of the region. Its why Ben Houchen for example has faired so well in the Tees Valley; because people feel that he is delivering things that they want and that they deserve. Labour had the opportunity to do that since 1997, but largely failed to deliver. It's also why the Labour Party's opposition to (or stance on) Brexit was disastrous, with the 2019 results reflecting that. People felt that something they wanted (and needed) was being taken away against their will.

In terms of capturing the youth, Corbyn was fine. In terms of capturing the general population, many of whom read the Daily Heil and the Scum on a regular basis, he was never going to have the platform to win. I don't believe the general public would vote for a very left wing set of policies straight from a hard right Tory regime, I think that would only work if you had a more centre-left government in place first (i.e I think it could have worked straight after Brown, if the financial crash hadn't happened, but it's a field day for the right-wing press when under a Tory government).

I'm not blaming them, simply stating that they need to have perspective. The Corbyn experiment, which may I add I supported for a few years, is over and the party needed to unite and move forward. On the 2005 point, the party had been in power for 7 years and had taken us to a war which many opposed - vote share was bound to drop. Ditto 2010 and the financial crash (not Labour's fault as we know, but the press will be the press).

The party as a whole need to figure out what they are, and actually convey that to the general public. This Tory government are a bunch of charlatans, I'd take Thatcher in a heartbeat over this lot, and I find it astounding that there's no clear strategy to combat it - just jumping from one thing to the next without any real structure which makes sense to anyone who doesn't religiously follow politics.