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.
You realise someone always loses right? Losing an election doesn’t make someone unelectable.
I can see you support Blair and as a result Starmers copycat act, but there’s many times in the past where a left wing party has been in power in the UK and many countries where the left wing are in power now. You don’t HAVE to be moving to the right to get in power.
