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Can Labour ever win again? – politicalbetting.com
Can Labour ever win again? – politicalbetting.com
Labour has lost the last four general elections. It has not won the popular vote in England since 2001; twenty years ago. We can go further: aside from the landslide Blair victories of 1997 and 2001 Labour has not comfortably won 40%+ of the vote since 1970; over fifty years ago. Labour is not in power in Westminster or Scotland. It may shortly lose (or be forced to share) power in Wales. It does not directly control any county councils in England, and only a tiny fraction of district councils. Labour’s power and influence is confined to London, metropolitan cities, and a shrinking part of Wales, and its appeal limited to graduates, minorities, progressive professionals, and public sector unions.
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https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/feb/06/fury-at-gove-as-exports-to-eu-slashed-by-68-since-brexit
But one misconception. 1964 was not a convincing win. They had a majority of just four and were a mere 13 seats ahead of the Tories. In fact, had Butler rather than Home been PM, it is widely thought the Tories would have won.
It was 1966 that they won convincingly (and indeed, was their only double-digit victory from 1945 to 1997).
Labour have always had the problems you identify, although I will agree they have also had other sources of electoral strength as well that are now gone (e.g. the chapel vote, the Marxist vote). Similarly, since the 1867 Reform Act the Tories have always been formidable opponents on the basis of co-opting national identity. This delivered them tremendous landslides in 1874, 1886, 1900, 1918, 1924, 1959, 1983 and 2019. Of course, what national identity means has evolved over time, but it’s always been their preserve to the extent that Labour has seldom got a look in, with the exception of 1945 where the war service of Attlee, Bevin and Morrison was irreproachable (despite Churchill’s efforts to reproach it).
These are problems they have overcome before and can overcome again. But at the same time, we shouldn’t forget that they have also always been at best contenders for power in limited periods only, as were the Liberals. The Conservatives are the most successful democratic party of the last 150 years the wide world over for a very good reason.
If you are interested in it, there is an entire book on the Left’s difficulty in the face of national identity, called ‘Red Flag and Union Jack’ by Paul Ward. It only goes up to 1924 but I think you will see many striking parallels with what you’ve written.
As far as I can see, the UK plan needs to be to get to the ‘Australia’ position by the summer, with cases back to almost nothing thanks to vaccines and current restrictions, and everything re-opened - except the borders.
Let’s make the summer one big local party, with the one proviso that everyone needs to holiday in the UK or pay the price of quarantine. There’s so many lovely places in the UK, so many small businesses that desperately need the tourist revenue, and a government that needs every penny in VAT and income tax receipts it can get its hands on!
After the summer, once schools and universities are back and life is somewhere approaching normal, *then* we can think about opening travel corridors to similarly vaccinated and covid-free nations - but with the understanding that they can be withdrawn and mandatory quarantines re-imposed, at any time and with no notice.
There also needs to be a plan to deal with lorries and lorry drivers, if they become an issue. There should be enough testing capacity to test everyone on arrival.
Replace “Tory” with SNP and see Scotland.....the worrying thing there is the complacency, arrogance and self interest also appears to be infecting the Civil Service, Crown Office and Quangocracy.
Good thread - we have several Labour posters who illustrate the problem - one recently voters were not worthy of voting Labour...
My former colleagues are lovely people. But in discussing the various perils of the local opposition - Tories and independents - it was clear that they know they are going to get battered again. Just a "25%" chance of their Tees Valley Mayoral candidate winning. A candidate who they - the local grandees - all openly mock.
They simply don't know what the Labour Party is for any more, other than the muscle memory of fighting for people who largely don't share belief in the same things any more, and not being the Tories.
Or of course, keep ‘Tory’ and see Northern Ireland from 1921 to 1972.
When they also lost.
Very good assessment. However, I would throw something else into the mix. Labour continually tries to implement a broken business model. It invariably tries to pump up a public sector to levels that the private sector cannot afford. It loads up taxes and borrowing that the private sector suffers to pay. The result? Invariably, every Labour Govt. leaves office with unemployment higher than it inherited.
And post-Covid, that private sector will have been suffering the loss of businesses and the furloughing of workers that the public sector has sailed through. Worse, sailed through demanding pay rises, which Labour have said they will accede to. Not to diminsh the huge effort put in to fighting Covid, but structurally, it's the private sector that bears the scars of Covid. And will continue to do so, as it again has to bear the taxation and borrowing associated with propping up the economy. Those who would implement Corbynism jump about saying "Look! We can find the money when we have to!" - blithely ignoring the once-in-a-century nature of the reason and its immense burden that will have to be lifted.
We have also been fortunate to share a global problem with the outcome of low and reducing interest rates. The UK going on a spending binge in isolation would leave the rest of the world looking on askance - and demanding unusually higher interests from us. Just in case.
Labour won big in 1997 because a) Blair who b) didn't scare the innately small-C conservative British electorate. People believed him when he said he would follow big-C Conservative spending. As a result, he had the "scars on his back" from the public sector. If Labour wants power, Starmer will need to play that card again.
And endure to the howls from his own side.
I assume your Labour sorting themselves out in Scotland doesn't include winning 'their' voters back and a UK majority winning chunk of seats? That would be naively optimistic in the extreme.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/mar/13/spin-it-to-win-it-what-does-that-miliband-salmond-poster-tell-us-about-the-battle-of-the-political-brands
Whatever the Guardian thought at the time, this was the single most effective piece of party political literature since "Labour Isn't Working" (with a nod to Labour's Tax Bombshell too). The idea of a Labour leader utterly beholden on the economy to the SNP was toxic. I suggest that message retains its relevence in England (and Wales) going into the next election. If only because nobody puts Boris in that top pocket.
Once the pandemic itself is over, there's a huge opportunity for an opposition party, much as there was in 1945. The government will be tired, and severely constrained by the economics of the deep recession and ruined public finances. But they need to be thinking now, about what they will be saying at the next election. As Casino says in his excellent piece, the Labour party seem lost about who they are appealing to, with a large disconnect between the issues that their members care about and those that interest swing voters.
Blair won by appealing to Mondeo Man, and Starmer needs to look hard at those votes he needs - just as Blair did. They don't care about Palestine, trans rights or bashing 'the 1%', they care about buying a house and having a good job that lets them bring up their family. Labour need to be the party of building houses and stable, well-paid private-sector jobs, not of a cushy superannuated public sector with everyone else renting a shoebox and working three 'gigs' to put food on the table. They also don't like wishy-washy talk of 'fair' taxes - if they want taxes to rise, then at least be honest about it and make the case.
There's a huge opportunity there for the taking - if Starmer and Labour want to take it.
And the Indian commentators praising Dom Bess? Wow.
In the 50's I don't recall a sense of defeatism around Labour. They were going to win again. However, during the 80's one did get that feeling, especially after 1992.
As I recall, it wasn't Blair who made the initial and important difference, it was John Smith; who was a bit like Starmer.
Labour's problem seems to be that 'organised labour' is neither organised nor labour; the leadership seems much more political than trade unionist.
https://twitter.com/robpowellnews/status/1358314434045874176
The impression given was that every bill passed would need to have something for Scotland, at the expense of the other home nations, and that the guy effectively in charge of the UK would be someone wishing to break it up - after extracting as much as possible from it in the meantime.
The SNP are utterly toxic in England and Wales, in a way that even the worst of Corbyn's Labour couldn't manage.
Edit - Bloody hell. India imploding here. Everything now hinges on Pant and Pujara repeating Brisbane.
'Is Salmond still in charge? No? A woman you say. Shit, we can't do the breast pocket thing again can we?'
'I've got it Olly, we'll put Brittas, haw haw, peeping out of Sturgeon's handbag! Strong cuck energy!'
India put down several straightforward ones and Pant missed an easy stumping.
Who was it said ‘catches win matches?’
Well done whoever the England fielding coach is this tour.
But at the same time, I wonder how much of that popularity is due to name recognition coupled with knowing nothing about her actual record in government. Bear in mind, to most people who are not political geeks like us Sturgeon is a calm, thoughtful, articulate presence on screen for ten seconds.
Even Paul Collingwood would be pretty pleased with that.
Labour needs to appeal across England, though I am unconvinced that flag fetishism will do the trick, but also need serious negotiations with the SNP on what coalition would look like. That would have to be with the new Holyrood parliament later this year. I think a further Sindyref is certain to be part of the price, but if that could be at the end of the Parliament, it might well work for both.
No true Unionist can object to Scottish representation in government. If Unionism just means English hegemony then it means nothing.
Everyone else was lbw or bowled.
So England have already taken everything they’ve been offered *and* taken more catches in 30 overs than India managed in 190.
That’s a pretty damning stat, to be honest. India’s coach needs to utter some hard words and play those catches by Anderson and Root 100 times.
https://twitter.com/FraserNelson/status/1358320905890516993?s=20
'Did Nicola Sturgeon conspire to frame her old SNP boss on false sex charges? Alex Salmond's explosive claim that led to a toxic fallout could derail her bid for Scottish independence'
'Nicola Sturgeon is accused of taking the EU's side and risking vaccine rollout as she vows to publish details of UK's supplies despite Boris Johnson ordering her to keep them secret - as Brussels claims AstraZeneca is giving Britain too much'
''£8.6 billion of UK taxpayers' money has gone to help Scotland in the pandemic': Jacob Rees-Mogg slaps down SNP's demand for MORE cash as Boris 'bails out' Scotland's sluggish vaccination rollout by sending in the army'
'Nicola Sturgeon warned SNP 'cannot deliver' on Scottish independence promises'
'Nicola Sturgeon threatened with Scotland fund cut if independence plans not abandoned'
'Nicola Sturgeon struggles to defend EU against claims Brexit helped UK jab efforts'
'Fuming Sturgeon shakes head when 'congratulated' on catching up with UK vaccine programme'
Dangerous player. If he gets going things can change fast.
I can feel Mitchell Starc nodding and wincing in agreement.
OT - wrt Labour their problem remains as ever they are all about ideology and fighting against any compromises. In fact they remain much more 'conservative' historically than the real ones. This is why the poor old voters often get it in the neck. "Don't like the package- then f*** and join the Tories". The public keep taking them at their word.
After all, the Scottish press, as you never tire of telling us, is almost totally hostile to her (the National apart, which has a circulation of just 7000 and is barely more reliable than Breitbart).
Doesn’t seem to hurt her, or at least, not at the moment.
Most people do get their news from TV or internet sites now, and the fact is Sturgeon compares favourably in the exposure she gets to the UK PM. She’s able to say a sentence without repeating every third word, for a start.
Doesn’t necessarily mean that English people, who are not obsessed with Sindy, would be happy if she were running the government given what she’s actually done.
They won 39.99%.
Cue Justin to remind us they won 42% per opposed candidate.
Perilous, potentially terminal, but the same was said of Labour in 1992 and 2001 of the Tories.
Here is an edit by a Labour member to Dan Hodges Wiki entry in 2016:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dan_Hodges&oldid=699496006
Which I reverted, commenting drily that it was presumably from a supporter of Corbyn’s ‘kinder, gentler politics.’
Which would actually tend to support the point I was making.
But I appreciate reasoned arguments are not really your thing.
Do we know for sure he doesn’t work for SNP press office?
Edit - brave effort by Lawrence but at this moment Leach is looking more out of his depth than Ursula von der Leyen.
Con has old and rural, Lab has young and urban.
Populations everywhere are urbanizing, and old people die a lot. Some of them will become more conservative as they get older, but not all of them, especially as house buying is less accessible to younger people. Con has gone very hard on the themes of the declining demographics in a way that will be hard to reverse.
Parties can always reorient themselves so this of course doesn't mean that Con are doomed to long-term irrelevance, but the same fact means that Lab will ultimately find a winning coalition. I'm not sure whether they've got one now or not, and I don't have a strong opinion about where they should get it from, but I don't see a *structural* reason for the UK (or whatever is left of it) to be a long-term one-party state.
Edit - I’m trying to decide whether you meant that, or whether it was a typically unfunny attempt at a joke. I think you probably meant it, but either way it proves my point beautifully, so thank you.
A private healthcare firm contracted to distribute Covid jabs has been sidelined by Scotland’s largest health board as efforts are stepped up to turn around the lowest vaccination rates in the UK.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/covid-in-scotland-health-boards-take-control-to-fix-ailing-vaccination-rate-5vfc7wxkj
I appreciate that reality-based politics may be an unknown for you.
Did the Tories regain power by resolving their problems with minorities and the young, unveiling a new vision for the modern age, led by a team of political titans? ?
No (with the possible exception of Cameron's superficial modernity).
A wider perspective is needed.
Around the world, the centre and left struggles to advance a coherent vision of the state leading us toward a better future in the post-GFC world, and have been in retreat almost everywhere. The few successes arose only where electorates needed rescuing from palpably worse alternatives, most obviously Trump and Le Pen.
Hence a better question is whether the Tories can avoid become so bad that people will turn to Labour in desperation? Which is a re-cast of rcs's post top-thread.
You could look to the fall of communism as part of the story as to why the wider left lost credibility in advancing its solutions, but the defining episode is the 08/9 financial crisis and the effects of the policy responses to it.
Another wider point is that the right generally gets elected when the future looks threatening and the left when people are looking toward a credible better future (for us, post-war, the sixties - which we all know didn't start in 1960! - and the turn of the Millennium).
Since 2008, things have looked threatening, without end. More so right now.
A further wider point is that crises take time to feed through into politics. Post-GFC commentary along the lines of "the western capitalist economic system nearly collapsed, yet so little has changed!" was common.
That point doesn't hold, with the benefit of a decade's hindsight.
What the effect of Coronavirus will be, it is too early to say. I do predict that, next year, there'll be a flurry of comment about how, remarkably, everything has gone back to the way it was before, and in ten years' time we'll all be discussing how significantly the world changed after the pandemic.
Governments are already pushed toward more state-driven policies. It seemed jarring that, right now, the Tories announced (or leaked, it isn't clear) that they are finally giving up on market-driven solutions to health provision. But in another way it's entirely logical.
The fallout from the crisis might rescue the left along two different paths. Enough people might turn toward the likes of Trump2, Le Pen, the AfD and so on, that the sensible majority turn back and elect the left through fear. Or, slowly but surely, people might turn more hopeful as the world pulls out of pandemic, and the wider left might be able to articulate and champion a new vision.
Neither path requires anything to be done about identity politics.
The brutal truth is the Con->Lab switching is hard to pull off, the LibDems provide a helpful stopping off point.
And don't forget: they still lost. Clearly. 30 gains to be more or less where Gordon Brown was after he lost simply took the state of affairs back to updated version of 2010, but without the Lib Dems on the field.
2017 was the worst possible thing to happen to Labour as it's apotheosis has given them hope they can win when they have a left-wing offering coupled with a charismatic left-wing leader.
They can't.
I know we live in debased times, but hearsay from an anonymous rando on the internet doesn't usually count as such.
However she is a world class empathiser.
After all, in 1997 and 2001 the Tories were the party of essentially the rural retired. That’s no longer true. If that had been their only source of appeal, they would literally have died out by now. Who could forget their difficulties in 2005 because so few constituencies had active memberships?
Interestingly - to come back to CR’s point - I wonder if Labour may not have a similar problem in the Red Wall if they don’t reinvent themselves. I don’t think there are many members of Cannock Chase Labour Party under 70, and I know a fair number of them. They couldn’t even find a candidate under 70 for 2019.
Mr. Jonathan, if you were Labour leader would you actively try to help out the Lib Dems in blue areas?
I see posts from you here on conjuring up "something" externally, and blaming the moribund nature of the Lib Dems, but at what point do you accept that Labour needs to directly appeal to the wider, more moderate, electorate as I've outlined?
https://twitter.com/wallaceme/status/1358328453758599176?s=21
Edit: would want to see proper stats - that is presumably effectively a subsample.
Worth underlining: I didn't say Labour won't get any votes. I don't see any reason why they can't continue to bounce around in their 28-38% box for years. But, it's not enough and not enough in the right places to win.
So right now it feels like a strategy of perpetual opposition.
Who is the Mondeo Man or Worcester Woman de nos jours?
It may be a time coming, but the dam will eventually break, and governments start to be elected that prioritise the interests of younger working age people over those of the retired.
When that happens, we'll be looking at the moribund parties that spent so long defending the interests of economically inactive pensioners, and the PB lead will be about whether they will ever win again.
That would be my guess.
Without him India would be more buggered than a reluctant Turkish conscript right now.
Not scoring exactly slowly either.
Edit - and Pant has done very well.
We are shortly going to have a period of austerity that makes 2010-17 look like the golden years, and that even before we factor in the effects of Brexit. It is likely to be brutal, when the covid bills come in.
I have to go now as my toddler is giving me grief for not giving her enough attention, and doesn't appreciate me being on my phone.
Will try and drop in later!
I can’t remember a time when general policy-making was as moribund as today.
So that wealth will cascade down. Or alternatively, will be released to the government in the form of IHT/reversion.
And those people who inherit it will therefore have different priorities.
Of course, that also makes assumptions. It doesn’t include care home costs, for starters. Moreover, those in the north/midlands will leave less than those in London - an ex-council semi in Cannock is worth a tenth of a similar house in Kew.
But that is where generational shift may come in.
The rise of the SNP has created two headaches for Labour
1) The loss of a huge number of previously bankable seats
2) The impression that Labour would be a lap dog to the SNP, especially so if reliant upon them for votes in a coalition or C&S situation.
Point is, you have got nothing to back up your assertions that folk weren't swayed. I, on the other hand, reported back here in 2015 on the impact it was having on ENGLISH doorsteps - something you self-evidently know fuck-all about. So on this issue, just STFU. You are out of your depth, little man.