Banquo wrote:Son of Mathonwy wrote:Banquo wrote:
They needed to have an opinion on what they wanted to happen re the EU; lets see what the public wants after we've done a deal was a fairly late fudge, with no time to sell it, and the leader 'being neutral' just sounded odd. Personally, I think living up to their 2017 manifesto would have cost them less. Your 'survey' was likely 75% of Labour 'members'. The Tories managed to retain their Remain voter/constituencies in sufficient numbers, albeit enabled by Corbyn and the manifesto, and by Swinson and the daftness of revoke A50, then watered down.
Its not a semantic on weakness v liability in my mind. He was a catastrophe on the doorsteps- that's not a weakness that could be compensated for.
We'll have to agree to differ on the manifesto- my own personal view of its daftness (methods, not some outcomes) probably lets the opinions of most Labour MPs in the non corbyn camp confirm my own bias
, though it was in the top three of issues faced on the doorstep. Your argument on votes garnered is interesting, as you could also say the same on my other posited problems,
Its clear which camp you are in; two of the problems will solve themselves in any case. I think your analysis is wrong, but whatever, Labour were deserted by voters they took for granted.
OK, I've looked it up. The proportion of 2017 Labour voters who voted remain was 68%. Even in leave-voting constituencies, the proportion of Labour voters who voted remain was (on average) 60%:
https://www.britishelectionstudy.com/be ... fYwSX9pGHt
So, on the face of it Labour stood to lose more of their 2017 voters by going for leave. So I'm not sure what Nandy (et al) are arguing for. Votes would have been lost whichever way they went, but probably
more if they'd been pro-Brexit.
Every decision taken, every position held by a party can have consequences in terms of old voters retained or lost, new voters won or not. The important figure is the net change in vote. Concentrating on old voters lost is not seeing the whole picture, in fact it's only 1 out of 4 categories voters fall into with respect to each party.
Agreed, we both interpret this in the face of our own biases. No doubt this is not irrelevant to our disagreement
. Let's try to back up our claims with evidence whenever possible.
So you reject my and most non shadow cabinet mp arguments <to be clear my contention was that brexit strategy was only one part of the failure>
, and also seem to imply it wasnt even brexit policy. What is your analysis for why Labour lost 2m voters and were hammered?
A number of things. Would love to have a whole lot of stats to back this up and help me to rank these issues, but anyway, here's my take:
1) First and foremost, the first past the post system. Had we a PR system like most democracies, we would now have a Corbyn-led coalition of Labour, the Lib Dems, SNP, Greens and Plaid, and Brexit would not be happening, indeed it would never have begun. And the most extreme policies of Labour would not be implemented. And we'd be taking the first meaningful steps to stopping the climate catastrophe.
But, back to the world we actually live in, unfortunately...
I honestly don't know which of 2) and 3) was the most significant. Labour defectors say it was 2), but without input from everyone who did and did not vote for Labour, we can't be certain:
2) The perception of Corbyn. Part of this is due to the man himself (less charismatic than his opponent, struggled to project his message, appeared indecisive, the anti-semitism problem, old). Part of it is due to the unending character assassination performed by 5 national newspapers (and not much help from the Independent and Guardian until recently, if we're honest), abetted by more subtly negative coverage from the BBC. That most of the newspapers chose to vilify Corbyn rather than the dishonest, racist, homophobic, snobbish, misogynistic liar Johnson just shows how tough a job the Labour leader had. But ultimately, Corbyn's general unpopularity was a massive problem for Labour. They hoped they could turn it around again in the campaign, but this did not happen to a significant degree.
3) Brexit. This is clearly an unusual situation. It cuts across normal allegiances, disrupting core support. However this is also true for the Tories. The problem for Labour was that it could not attract all of the remain supporters while the Tory-Brexit Party deal meant that the Conservatives took most of the leave vote. Labour failed to stop the splitting of the remain vote because it decided on its Brexit policy much too late. Had it decided on that policy in April this year (before the local elections on 2nd May) the Lib Dems would not have seen a resurgence and would probably have seen their vote fall even further in the election. (And Corbyn would have seemed more decisive.)
4) Failing to make an electoral pact with the other remain parties, particularly the Lib Dems, cost them a number of seats. Once Farage made his deal with the Tories, this should have been done. Frankly it's disgraceful that it didn't.
5) The Media's tolerance of dishonesty. It goes without saying that most of the newspapers were a channel for Tory propaganda, but the fact that the BBC would not call out blatant lies (and use the word "lie") meant that the Tories could and did repeat them freely. And since the Tories were being staggeringly more dishonest than their opponents, this was a big problem for Labour.
6) I will mention economics, just to say that I
don't think this was a problem for Labour. Sure, some people didn't like it, but some people did. Without seeing the stats, who knows if it was a vote loser or gainer?
