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.
But they still lost. Talking academic numbers is fine for student learning. But they lost. And in 2019 did they capitalise on that swing? Oh no they lost again! And badly.
Perhaps it was unfair if me to diminish the influence of the papers. I just don’t buy the narrative that it was all the rotten newspapers fault. Corbyn just was not a good figurehead for Labour to be winning elections. And he certainly wasn’t what we needed during Brexit. Just imagine what a stronger opposition could have done to prevent it from ever happening. That’s squarely on Corbyn.