Corbyn, Brexit and a messaging failure on the policies are the main things blamed.
Since Thursday’s crushing election result, there’s been a spate of post-mortem hot takes.
We thought it was useful to put 16 of them together in one place and see what themes come out of them.
The two most common themes emerge as Corbyn’s personal unpopularity and Labour’s Brexit policy – which is considered either too pro-Remain or too ambiguous.
Several commentators also say that, while Labour’s manifesto promises are popular as individual policies, voters didn’t think Labour would or could deliver on them. Plus, there were too many of them and they came out of the blue – Labour should have spent years arguing for them. Nobody though said that they were too left-wing or radical.
Others make the point that Labour’s decline in the seats it lost goes back decades – with New Labour occasionally blamed for taking these areas for granted, failing to invest in them and parachuting outsiders like Tony Blair or the Milliband brothers into them.
Sienna Rodgers also makes the point that Labour’s hordes of enthusiastic activists are disproportionately London and big city based – perhaps partially explaining why the London vote held up better than Northern, Midland and Welsh towns.
- Simon Fletcher, who ran Corbyn’s leadership campaign, blames the leader’s unpopularity and how individually popular policies were packaged together in the manifesto.
- Caroline Flint, who lost her seat in the Don Valley, blames Corbyn’s unpopularity and Brexit.
- Lisa Nandy, the Wigan MP who will run for the leadership, says Labour hasn’t listened to Northern towns for years. It should have focussed on buses not trains, for example.
- Jess Phillips, who may also run for the leadership, says Labour isn’t trusted to deliver its radical policies.
- Sienna Rodgers, LabourList editor ,blames the Brexit Party standing down, the effectiveness of the ‘Get Brexit Done’ message, geographical disparity of activists and ineffective messaging
- George Eaton, of the New Statesman, blames Corbyn’s unpopularity, Labour’s ambiguous Brexit policy and a lack of credibility to deliver the party’s popular policies.
- Duncan Thomas says Labour weren’t considered credible – voters thought they wouldn’t or couldn’t make peoples’ lives better.
- John Harris says Labour lacks roots in its supposed heartlands and hasn’t got involved in working-class self help groups.
- Nesrine Malik says many Leave-voters feel Labour/Remainers look down on them and accuse them of xenophobia.
- Richard Seymour says Labour’s radical policies felt abstract because we’re not used to hearing about them.
- Adam Ramsay says Labour failed to rage against the hated political system.
- Aditya Chakrabotty says Labour has taken the areas it lost for granted for decades and Corbyn failed to reverse this trend.
- Jonathan Freedland blames Corbyn.
- Gary Younge blames a lack of message discipline and a failure to shift the debate away from Brexit.
- James Mcash, a councillor in Southwark, says that neither Brexit or ‘too left-wing’ are convincing explanations – although he says he doesn’t have the answer himself.
- Kate Proctor, of the Guardian, blames Corbyn, not making the case for long enough for the manifesto’s policies, Brexit and Labour’s frontbench being too London-centric.
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22 Responses to “All the ‘what went wrong for Labour’ hot takes in one place”
Jo Swash
NATO/ 5 eyes immediate re-appraisal of a core member going rogue nation. Life might have been very much more dangerous here due to kowtowing to our enemies.
A zombie parliament, a rotten speaker and a useless indecisive ‘opposition’ now means a Boris domination that might make Thatcher’s seem mildly brisk.
Congratulations.
randy fulcher
Rather than concentrate on what went wrong, maybe consider the things Labour got right, and build around them.
For instance,
(1) i’ll get back to you
Matt London
What went wrong: the decision of a handful of “useful idiots” to nominate Mr Corbyn at all.
Zarb
When is Shami Chakrabarti going to be sacked. Her role in the publishing of the whitewash report into anti-Semitism really needs to be looked at. Either she lied and failed to report what she uncovered, or her investigation was a total failure. Either way, it means she lack integrity, or is incompetent, both of which preclude her from holding an important position such as shadow Attorney-General. You can’t hide Shami, we need to know whether you’ve hidden this or were just useless.
ExLabour
In traditional Labour areas Corbyn goes down like Nish Patel at a charity dinner. Telling 17.4 M voters, many of them Labour to F Off because we don’t care what you think. Or maybe it could be the old man himself with his anti British, pro-terrorist, anti-Semetic, tax and spend, back to the 70’s policies that pushed moderates to defect.
I defected years ago so I don’t give a toss really, but the words ‘chickens’, ‘home’, and ‘roost’ spring to mind in this self inflicted, self indulgent episode in Labour politics. However, I see a Corbyn Continuity candidate being primed (Starmer, Thornberry etc)….goodbye Labour.