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.
To reach hundreds of thousands of new readers and to make the biggest impact we can in the next general election, we need to grow our donor base substantially.
That's why in 2024, we are seeking to generate 150 additional regular donors to support Left Foot Forward's work.
We still need another 124 people to donate to hit the target. You can help. Donate today.
22 Responses to “All the ‘what went wrong for Labour’ hot takes in one place”
Tom Sacold
Labour has lost its working-class roots. It has become a party for the metropolitan, middle-class, champagne socialists.
Until we reconnect with our old traditional British working-class supporters and address their interests the Tories will always have an opportunity.
Matt
Yet not a single mention of anti semitism, although it didn’t take long for the likes of Livingstone to explcitly blame the Jews again.
Blissex
The Labour defeat is really not a big deal: there was a fall in votes, to abstentions and Brexit Party/Conservatives in the north mostly (and a small one in the south to LibDems), but the big deal was it was amplified in the north by FPTP, as Labour could afford to lose vote to the LibDems in the south but not to “Leave” parties in the north.
The big deal, which our Mandelsonian Tendency entrysts have to explain, is why despite the FT, the Guardian, and Tony Blair himself guaranteed that most voters are “centrists” for “Remain”, and want a “talented” “popular” leader like Jo Swinson or Chuka Umunna, the LibDems still got less than half of the Labour votes, with a very “centrist” for “Remain” message, and zero hostility from the right-wing tabloids and huge support from the “centrist” for “Remain” press.
I have read so many times the usual deluded or malicious mandelsonians claim that if Labour declared for “2nd ref” they would get a landslide from the now-55-60% of “Remain” voters, and after Labour did that, that if Labour adopted a “centrist” for “Remain” (not just “2nd ref”) message they would get a landslide or else be wiped out by the LibDems.
What happened is that a tory for “Leave” message got a large majority of seats, and no landslide for the LibDems; all the ex-Labour (and ex-Conservative) “centrists” for “Remain” were defeated, despite their claims that their previous mandate was not due to the party, but to the personal support of their voters for their personal “centrist” for “Remain” message.
60022Mallard
“Yet not a single mention of anti semitism, although it didn’t take long for the likes of Livingstone to explicitly blame the Jews again.”
Almost at a stroke “The Nasty Party” crown has been transferred to us.
At least with Jeremy gone the new leader will claim we have turned over a new leaf when the doubtless condemnatory report is issued, but will we have?
Peerages for whitewashes might be a continuing embarrassment too.
Agent Smith
“Nobody though said that they were too left-wing or radical.”
Well maybe political commentators thought that but the average centre-left voter certainly did not i.e. all those who voted for Blair and got a Labour in government in for once.
It seems that many of these pundits have a blind-spot, they really don’t understand that Marxist socialism is a turn off for average voters. They don’t want to conduct what is essentially an experiment with this country’s economy. They want to tweak and adjust what we’ve already got.
Until these people understand that, along with the left-wing politicians who peddle this ‘radical” and ‘progressive’ agenda they will be continually disappointed at each election.
Radical is a scary word. Progressive always seems to be regressive when you look at the detail.
Stop scaring us. Try words like ‘aspiration’ and phrases like: ‘keep more of your money to spend as you wish’. After all we work hard enough for it. Why on earth would we want to hand it over to a bunch of incompetent politicians or faceless bureaucrats to divvy it up according to their own political wishes?
It’s not rocket science.