UK Politics
General Discussion for politics in the UK.
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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.
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.
Losing twice, the second time the worst since.... what was it.... 1935? It literally is the definition. How many times do you need him to contest the GE?
I'm realistic. I'm also more inclined to vote centre ground of politics rather than far left or far right. And it seems the rest of the UK electorate are like that too. Otherwise you'd have had your Corbyn government by now but you don't. I would rather a left leaning centre ground party like Blair's or like Brown's or hopefully like Starmer's than the misery we have at the moment.
On a wider point, we simply don't have the electoral system to allow for a party like Corbyn's anywhere near government. If you feel passionate about a Corbyn government you should feel passionate about PR and push your MP to introduce a vote on changing our system over to that rather than the constant rather fruitless narrative of us vs them.
Regardless of feelings on Corbyn, everyone in the UK who cares about democracy should do this.
Not true at all, we've had progressively further right parties for years. You can't compare the current tories to John Majors.
These are hardly far right parties. Yes they are right of John Major (well Truss Book are, Cameron not so much) but the framing that they're far right parties is wrong and misleading.
If parties are too extreme one way or the other the electoral won't vote for them. That's my point.