A Labour leader needs to appeal to more than simply the hard line left crowd in the Labour party. Corbyn was never electable outside of North London and a handful of university campuses. Not in any serious way at least. That’s why he got battered in both elections he contested.
Labour need someone that appeals to their party (or most of it) plus they need someone that appeals to voters outside their party. Corbyn night have done the first, but he failed miserably at the latter. Blair did both crushingly well. I hope Starmer does both (but he’s trying his hardest to fuck up both parts).
I will agree with you that the public infighting within Labour didn’t help. But I don’t pretend that Corbyn was the right candidate for a Labour government.
A Labour leader needs to appeal to more than simply the hard line left crowd in the Labour party. Corbyn was never electable outside of North London and a handful of university campuses. Not in any serious way at least. That’s why he got battered in both elections he contested.
I was enthusiastic to see Corbyn in power but then it came to the general election and they kept announcing one ambitious thing after the next. I was largely in favour of them but I was still thinking “what are you playing at?” as they’d have cost a fortune and there was no evidence of where all the money would come from. And if I thought that, it’s no wonder other people were scared off.
The money would have come from Old McDonnell’s farm of course! Selling eggs from the community chicken Co-op that is fed from grinding up the bones of the rich. Obviously 🙄…
Corbyn was never electable outside of North London and a handful of university campuses.
I can’t agree with this. He was vastly popular in a lot of areas, I’m very much not a londoner and well out of university and heard a lot of support.
The thing to realise I believe, is that most voters are easily swayed and not vastly invested. That leads to an environment where whoever the tabloids like gets in regardless. Tabloids are mostly run by very rich people who are never going to support wealth taxes, closing of loopholes, restraints on business, etc.
If the Sun, Mirror and Daily Mail put out a front page tomorrow saying they were supporting the green party then they’d get in.
Popular doesn’t relate to electable. Corbyn’s 2019 election decimation would suggest to that.
I also don’t believe that the electorate is that stupid to be swayed by newspapers. For sure, there’s stupid voters - I get that. But I think most people didn’t connect with his vision for the future which was essentially “we’ll be your best friend and not Tories”. It was a bit wishy washy which didn’t connect with the electorate.
His stance (non stance) on Brexit was also a massive failure of his administration. He wanted to be everyone’s Brexit friend - friend of leavers friend of remainers just lend him your vote and pretend it didn’t happen. Labour massively shit the bed with the Brexit question. Incoherent and lacklustre policy.
But 2017 saw the biggest labour swing since 1945, which is way more than Blair managed. That’s very electable.
Not sure how you can diminish the newspaper influence either, it’s pretty well documented. If you talk to the average person they don’t know the policies at all.
I really don’t get your position. You keep asserting that Starmer is “electable,” but here you acknowledge that his action are alienating to both people within the party and outside of it.
The only thing Starmer has going for him is extreme luck. If Boris hadn’t fucked up Covid so bad and made the Tories so unpopular, I doubt Starmer would have the capabilities to win this election.
