A few points:Sandydragon wrote:No argument there. The opposition needs to be effective and that will be hard against such a big government majority, albeit one built on sand I think.Son of Mathonwy wrote:Hmm. I think then, the next decision the Labour party takes needs to be a good one.Sandydragon wrote: I think it’s both. I don’t think that left wing policies appeal to enough of the electorate to gain a victory at a general election, especially without the old safe Scottish seats.
On top of that you have Corbyn and his obvious failings. And that’s before you get to the supporting caste like Dianne Abbott.
If Labour wants to win a general election, it needs to move more to the centre.
1) Nandy and Kinnock are talking rubbish. Labour would have lost even more votes if it had become a Brexit party (albeit a softer one) - its voters are primarily for remain. They had to offer a second referendum (IMO), or lose half their votes to the Lib Dems. Their main problem (IMO) was not to move decisively to a second referendum position earlier. By the time they did it, they'd lost a huge number of voters and not all came back. I don't think the "neutral on the referendum" position was a big problem (broad church and all that), but the months wasted getting there was.
2) Labour would get more votes if it moved towards the centre, but how far is a big question. It's pointless moving to the (New Labour/Lib Dem/Tory-lite) centre - the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater. But a slightly less aggressive approach would be better. And certainly an attempt to appear more centrist would be good (an impossible task for Corbyn).
3) If you believe Mells' graphs on the previous page, Labour's economic policy was not a big factor in people not voting for Labour, so I'd argue that many of their left-wing economic policies are (at the very least) not a problem for voters.
4) I do blame the media for a lot of the supposed "leadership" issues with Labour. When people say they didn't like the Labour leadership, I think they're not so much saying that their leadership qualities are bad - they're saying they simply don't like or respect Corbyn (et al). And this essentially emotional position is something that is very much influenced by the newspaper that your household gets. If you take a random tabloid, it's far more likely to contain right-wing propaganda than the opposite; read that for a few years, telling you Corbyn is a twat 100% of the time, you can't help but believe it a little.
5) Whoever Labour picks - unless it is a centrist, and therefore not such a worry for the billionaire newspaper owners - will have their character assassinated from the second they arrive in the position. This is a problem. Therefore, Labour need to pick someone sharp, without any significant chinks in their armour, and who looks like they could take Johnson on. From my POV, at this early stage, Starmer looks most promising.