You inadvertently stumbled into my point. Song mentioned that in the US, the blue collar shift was limited to whites.. My point is that the UK is so white at this point that race isn't worth mentioning, so I didn't in the post that Song was responding too.
OK AFAIK the key indicators would appear to be age and education - which I think may be similar to the US Race is actually significant for the Labour Party as they have a growing constituency of muslim/brown voters
Race is also a big indicator in the US as well. Non-whites are majority Democrats, while the opposite is true for Whites. The UK is 87% percent white. While that 13% certainly isn't nothing, the UK is still 14% more white than the US is.
The problem is the conservatives are portrayed as Islamophobes, and ran counter to that by putting prominent nonwhite Tories on the television shows. Corbyn was unable to counter the stereotype of Labour's anti-Semitism and that did hurt him.
Agreed but as naughty has pointed out - it shapes Labour messaging whereas it leaves the Tories free to be racist
No probably about it. This is the political equivalent of an Everton being in a Champions League position in March but getting relegated.
Along with the future demise of Farage, one of the very few positives of the last few months. Maybe now they'll get rid of the Orange Bookers and revert to an Ashdown/Kennedy centre/centre left party.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/13/labour-why-lost-jeremy-corbyn-brexit-media Interesting read from Gary Younge
There's been a few articles kicking around on who next for Labour. Let me offer my drunken thoughts for anyone remotely interested on the bookies favourites. Keir Starmer A bit of a blank slate at the moment. Will get credit for many for taking on the near-impossible task of Labour's Brexit position. Will get credit for working with Corbyn, but some fear he's a centrist careerist who's always had eyes for the top prize. Would probably win a landslide victory if voted on today, but would need to bring his own vision to the party. Forensic rather than charismatic. Rebecca Long-Bailey McDonnell's protege, so probably too tainted by Corbynism. Also very underwhelming to me. If the leadership have their way, will win, but I'm not sure even those on the left are too impressed. Jess Phillips Dear God, no. "I'm a bit thick but here's what I think anyway" can work from the back benches, but doesn't really cut it from the front bench. A favourite of the Labour right, but highly unpopular among the membership for her opposition to Corbyn. Will probably have the backing of the right wing press, for what it's worth, but that won't wash with the Momentum crowd. Angela Raynor Rent-a-gob. I like her, and she gets bonus points for shouting down Farage in two different debates, but I fear her demeaner would not translate well to the wider public. From the left, but certainly not the Corbyn left, so will definitely come close. I've heard lots of talk that the Tories actually worry about her, but that's probably because they wouldn't get a word in in any debate. Yvette Cooper If she'd offered any form of originality in 2015, she would have won comfortably. Instead it was Blair-lite, and sulking on he back benches won't do her any favours. Being Mrs Ed Balls is as open goal for the Tory press. Lisa Nandy Arch remainer turned arch leaver. A clear pragmatist from the centre left who appeals across the party. Could have been a serious threat in 2015 had she not put family first, but probably too anti-Corbyn for the current membership. Appears to have serious momentum coming from 25-1 to 10-1 i just over today. Emily Thornberry She's always impressed me, and she's had the better of Johnson frequently as Shadow Foreign Secretary. A bit of an easy target for the press with the "White Van Man" comments, but more than capable of holding her own. Being the wife of a Lord is not really something many grass roots activists can relate to though. Clive Lewis Close enough to Corbyn to keep his support having nominated him and been on his front bench, but apart enough to distinguish himself having resigned over policy. Impeccable background with Afghanistan service, and a more than competent debater. Voting against A50 would work against him though if Brexit is still an issue. The Prince Across The Water Only really lauded by the press to undermine his brother. Some serious bagage from the Blair/Brown years, and couldn't possibly live up to the hype the Blairites have placed on him since 2010. Could probably eat a bacon sandwich without looking wierd, though. Sadiq Kahn Pisses off Tories more than anyone other than Diane Abbott (which is certainly nothing to do with skin colour). Untouched by the Corbyn era, and a savvy performer. Probably not left enough to command cross party support, but easily the most impressive Labour person from the past few years as Mayor of London.
For balance, the Lib Dem options: Anyone not called Jo Swinson. Ideally voodoo would enable them to resurect Paddy Ashdown or Charles Kennedy, but a drunk Scottish tramp would be an improvement.
The quick and correct appointment of John Smith was more important, as it prevented an immediate lurch from Kinnock which would have been typical of Labour. After Smith died, Blair having his polar opposite as deputy in Prescott was crucial to party unity, but I agree Campbell was always an impressive part of the leadership, regardless of his Thick Of It failings. The promise of almost certain victory and then a 179 majority was unsurprisingly useful in keeping the party united. Following that, stacking the PLP with Progess types was guaranteed to promote loyalt, but laid the seeds for the post-Brown problems as there was little diversity in contrast to the membership
Personally I like Clive Lewis but that's mainly because he comes across as identifiably a human being, unlike some of the other ones. This was him winning 2 years ago... As long as something's happened with brexit by the time we get there we should be OK.
Yeah, I was going to post that but forgot I noticed this bit which reflects what I said earlier... The easiest answers here are also the least adequate. To blame it all on Jeremy Corbyn, Brexit, the media, the manifesto or a failure of tactical voting is to deny a bigger, more complex picture. Of course Brexit played a significant role. Labour had three years to come up with a coherent offer to counter Tory bluster and failed. Given that its biggest losses were in leave areas, the notion that it should have cast itself as an unequivocal party of remain and a second referendum makes no sense. That certainly didn’t do the Liberal Democrats any good. But also this... The problem was not the manifesto. Labour’s plans for nationalisation, public spending and wealth redistribution were popular, achievable, and would not have left Britain in a radically different place from many other European nations. But if you’re going to promise something that ambitious, you have to first of all prepare people politically for it and then reassure them you can actually do it. Labour did neither effectively, instead promising more things each day, displaying a lack of message discipline that felt like a metaphor for potential lack of fiscal discipline. As the campaign went on we seemed to shift our position and add new stuff in. In some ways it was less like a campaign and more like a closing down sale
This all looked very familiar... One thing I've learned that that doesn't adequately show is that when you get to a certain point, you can't get any wetter. There's a sort of point of equilibrium in terms of moisture which cannot be exceeded. We had people from all over... Shrewsbury, Wolverhampton, Ludlow, The Wrekin, a LOAD of people from Machynlleth, (which is a tory stronghold so they thought they'd do more good over here)... Hackney, Walsall, Tottenham. Literally all OVER the place. The other thing I noticed from that film is that Ruth Smeeth's group at the end was FAR too big for a 'final knock' round. You only have 4-5 people in the group to work effectively. Otherwise you're all just getting in each other's way and walking past each other to get to the next door.
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...class-voters-didnt-trust-labour-jess-phillips I'm far from being her biggest fan, but this is a good piece by Jess Phillips and clearly her early leadership pitch. It's a clear contrast to the response from the likes of Margaret Hodge.
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...e-can-give-people-reason-to-vote-labour-again It sounds liek Lisa Nandy is also looking at standing, based on this.
At a more meta-level IMO Labour simply missed the boat on a generational shift (just like May did) In the 80s, neo-liberalism swept. That meant Thatcher and Reagan, but in NZ and Oz that meant labour governments - Bob Hawke and Lange took neo-lib doctrine to market first. Then came the 3rd way in the late 90s which was an extremely savvy play - NZ labour copied many of these ideas. But the thing about the Blair and Clarke governments is we were far better at media management that the Tories. This was the sunrise of true PR and a whole new ball game. As much as it was about policy third way labour dominated media and made the conservatives irrelevant for a generation. We just had better kit them them (the so called Spin-era), and were first to market. Then came populism in the 2015/16 which is sweeping the classic neo-libs. Both May and Cameron got shipwrecked by this, thanks to being stuck in the dark ages of Westminister led spin. With the Tories this had been largely a civil war, but now Bojo took over the whole country based on Dom's leave style asymmetrical media warfare. IMO 2017 obscured the fact that Corbyn simply wasn't a popular enough populist - because Maybot was worse. But the idea you can't win with a left platform is false IMO - Jacinda swept into power via coalition, and she is actually quite popular. Jacinda is simply much better at using direct media to communicate with the public and thus control the establishment media. But she is also extremely good at mainstream media. Left wing populism is possible - but IMO labour now missed the boat This is sort of where the Democrat party has been much savvier in the US - winning loads of local races by focussing on stuff people like (healthcare!!), combined with credible, energetic candidates. Ditto Jacinda does not run massive disinfo like Trump or Dom. She runs on housing, poverty, pay rises for teachers etc etc Labour don't need some trumpy lefty - but they do need someone people actually like, who appeals to their common sense notions. But especially the machinery needs to be good. I can't believe how little Labour made of the botched Brexit, Bojos weakness etc etc
If the people wanted Brexit and after 3 years you can't get it done and are standing in the way of that then this is the result you get. The people spoke now deliver. Labour problem is the ideas of the past "Old Labour" won't work. Didn't help they got a bumbling fool like Corbyn as leader. Maybe the party rank and file will make up and understand in the 21st century old 20th century ideology and relics like Corbyn are obsolete. This Brexit election proved that people want it done Brexit means Brexit. Labour lost alot of consuitences in the North that haven't been Tories for decades. I believe this is a temporary realignment these seats up north will revert when Brexit gets done. Union is probably dead SNP cleaned up and the Lib dems are a mess as well. Tories highest vote and seat share since 1987. A fair result and well deserved. This is what happens when the establishment ignore the people.
Yeah, excellent post mate... There's a couple of points I noticed! Yes, this is similar to the point I made about how the 2017 GE rather misled us. As I mentioned at the time, we were saying to voters that we didn't want the tories to get too big a victory because then they'd go hell for leather privatising the health service, etc. etc. On that occasion the country, as a whole, rather 'overshot'in their support for us and we ended up in hung parliament territory. IOW we probably weren't as popular as it seemed. This time they went the other way, possibly as a result of that occasion. When focus groups and polls are done many of the individual policies were popular but there didn't seem to be a coherent theme. As I said elsewhere, by the time we got to the 'free broadband' one the manifesto had begun to look more like a closing down sale than a political party offering for government. It just looked... well, odd! The stuff about giving 10% of all medium and large companies share to their workforce, (and government), looked distinctly peculiar. People thought, as I did, 'Won't they just move their corporate headquarters and trading arms abroad, out of the reach of the government? Leaving their manufacturing base here... hopefully!' Giving workers an incentive to buy shares and even favouring companies that had been bought by their workforce, (in terms of business from the state), is one thing but there was a rather 'proscriptive' element in some of the things in the manifesto.
Agreed. The big idea was missing IMO. With the Tories it is clearer what the big idea was. Get Brexit done - thereby breaking the shackles of the EU. Its a dumb argument but at least they had a concept people could buy into. The first mover advantage is big. e.g. now Jacinda got into Government, it is much harder to get her out, than it would have been to beat her in the first place.
Ah, OK! But also, I remember back in the day the tories got rid of Thatcher and got in John 'Mogadon man' Major. He had a lot of the same policies but he was 'new', (apparently ). That's not a small matter. People just got bored with Jezza and he wasn't attractive enough as a personality for people to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Simon Jenkins has the same take as me... The Lib Dems helped the Tories to victory again. Now they should disband The party’s only achievement was to split the vote. It should now merge with Labour and become a moderate influence. No, it was not just Jeremy Corbyn. Last week’s crushing defeat of the left was also caused by the Liberal Democrat party splitting the vote. Yet again, by offering itself as the vote launderer of British liberalism, it has served as merely the fellow traveller of British Conservatism. Boris Johnson owes it a huge debt of gratitude. Misreading election results – largely so as to gloat or spread blame – is the traditional folly of post-election analysts. Boris Johnson won the election with a thumping parliamentary victory, but the operative word is parliamentary. His 43.6% of the vote was ahead of Theresa May’s only by 1.2 percentage points, and dozens of his MPs were elected with less than 50% of the vote. Most of these – such as Kensington, Keighley, Bridgend and Chingford – were seats that Labour would have won had there been no Lib Dem presence. As for the election being a “second referendum” on Brexit, anti-Brexit or second referendum parties won more votes than did Johnson, even assuming all Tories were pro-Brexit. Yes, leave voters appear to have swarmed to the Conservatives, notably in the north, and are thus probably short-term. But the Lib Dem vote soared by 1.3m or 4.1 percentage points, while Corbyn’s fell by 2.6m. Johnson’s rose by only 304,000. The reality is that the left-of-centre vote was calamitously split. Polling during the campaign saw Labour surge only when the Lib Dems appeared to collapse. With the exception of the Tony Blair era, Labour has been persistently vulnerable to moderate leftwing sentiment defecting to the Liberals. Somehow such voters feel they can exonerate themselves from guilt by association with socialism without overtly siding with conservatives. They can comfort themselves that they voted “a curse on both houses”. In reality they did not. They effectively voted Conservative, or in a very few Lib Dem seats, they voted “hung parliament”. So, even if we accepted the idea that it was all about, a) Corbyn's unpopularity, or b) Brexit, is it possible that a left-wing labour government, (so, not a Blairite 'tory-lite' one IOW), can EVER win an election with the LibDems and Green splitting the vote in our first past the post parliamentary democracy. I mean, bearing in mind we lost with Ed Miliband as well and you could hardly call his manifesto 'radical'... quite the opposite. I know that @The Jitty Slitter has mentioned Jacinda Ardern as a positive role-model for a UK labour leader but, correct me if I'm wrong mate but, isn't your electoral system fundamentally different? Doesn't it often, (always?), have minority governments? Of course, as mentioned, that's also why these comparisons to US potus politics don't really work as it's a different system, again, mostly without a viable 3rd party option, (and for a single position in their case). IOW it's very different.