Comments on: Social democrats across Europe face electoral disaster. Labour is bucking the trend

By: Dave Roberts

Dave Roberts — Fri, 06 Oct 2017 00:59:06 +0000

The writer should stop pandering to racism. Or rather stop being a racist all together. Oh, and stop being a sanctimonious hypocrite as well.

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 04 Oct 2017 08:14:52 +0000

The title on that graph needs to be clearer that it’s talking about ONLY left-wing parties in the PES /S&D.

Germany’s Die Linke (Literally, THE LEFT) and Die Gruene (Centre-left) got over 4 million votes each, which means the German bar on the graph would be up at 17 million and more.

By: John p Reid

John p Reid — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 15:04:06 +0000

Apart from labour didn’t win the election,and the anti semitism,which is racism,you can promise ending austerity if you think you’re not going to win,ask the liberal democrats

By: patrick newman

patrick newman — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 09:31:04 +0000

I think the 10% rate of unemployment and the imposition of an arbitary 3% deficit had more to do with Hollande’s unpopularity than a reasonable 60% rate of tax for very high earners – would you prefer a 25% rate of VAT? Anyway Mr Duckington misses the point. Being the “me too”, austerity lite party did not do us much good in 2010 and 2015. 2017 was a break through with a radical manifesto. Incidently unlike 2017 the 2015 manifesto could not bring itself to even mention the phrase council or social housing. Everything was affordable!

By: Daniel Duckington

Daniel Duckington — Mon, 02 Oct 2017 16:46:36 +0000

This analysis shows the flaws of Diana Abbott’s calculations on police officers. She compares Labour’s raw vote to France, Germany and the Netherlands combined but completely ignores that all 3 have different electoral systems to Britain. Germany and the Netherlands have proportional voting systems. If you combine Die Linke and the SPD, you have more votes than Labour but that is beside the point. When you compare Labour’s success with 3 very different countries it makes your analysis seem odd at best. In the Netherlands, the combined Left did appallingly badly. If it was just about austerity, then why didn’t one of the parties do better to improve their result? Clearly, that is not the case. In France, there is some argument about going to the Left would have meant that the Socialist party had done better. In fact the Socialist Party under François Hollande was a disaster BECAUSE it instituted left wing/socialist policies that could not work such as a 60% top rate tax. Overall, the ignorance of Diana Abbott is showing