Wipeout for Labour in Hartlepool

@DeRigueurMortis I agree with a lot of that. I think the problems go deep. All I am saying is that for those who do want to make a difference, and especially on women's rights, then they will have more impact joining a party even with minimal involvement.

On women's rights, there are groups within all the parties working hard. I do think a lot of people are waking up to the fact that actually this is not the new gay rights movement.

But Brexit is over , finit , history. Will people vote Tory in some Groundhog Day perpetuity? Like soccer fans reliving 1966 forever. There must be a more sensible reason...please

The point is (and I know this is will horrify some people) but to win elections you have to tell voter that better time await and that's why Blair was so successful at elections/ "Things can only get better" was his theme tune. Whatever you think of his legacy - the perpetual truth is that no one wants to buy into a defeatist narrative, or one that paints them as villains. The only way forward now is - Brexit has happened- how do we make the best of things, how do we rediscover our collective mojo, we're great etc That's how you'd get your team to work well and galvanise around a mission at work.

Yes, Keir. But what are you going to do about it?

www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/london-mayor-local-uk-elections-2021-latest-news-results-b933718.html?utm_source=upday&utm_medium=referral

I'm way past this point now (I'mmore frustratedand annoyed at Labour), but I really feel for former Labour voters who are feeling so upset that they couldn't vote for them any more. I've seen people saying they have been in tears over it. Doesn't sound like the emotions of a bigot to me.

They keep saying this, 'listen to voters'.

The thing is you can do politics two ways.

You can have a genuine, democratic desire to represent the views of ordinary people in the street, speak for those people and look for outcomes compatible with these on the key issues of the day. In which case you're going to be representing a large proportion of the electorate and their desire to see you in power.

Or you can have passionate, niche views not relevant to the lives and views and experiences of ordinary people in the street, and want your chosen outcomes. In which case you have to accept you're not going to garner much of a vote.

Labour are a party of the second kind now, but confused by having once been a party of the first kind, and an inherited expectation of just getting heavy voting blocks without having to do anything more than exist. If the electorate don't want you in power they're telling you something. Moaning at them for voting wrong..... you've lost all contact with the concept of 'democracy'.

The problem with this is that whilst the LP's attitude towards women stinks and has impacted some women to leave the party/remove their vote it's not the crux of the party's woes.

Of course to many on this forum it's a make or break issue wrt where you put your cross on the ballot paper but in the context of the wider voting public it's not a deal breaker.

The concern LP policy on Self ID creates is simply yet another, but lesser reason not to vote for them.

The big issue was, and remains Brexit and its aftermath.

The LP massively misunderstood the voting intentions of vast swathes of its northern voters in the initial campaign and then post referendum continued to "remain" (pun intended) tone deaf to these voters by repeatedly trying to block the leave process.

I'm doing so they effectively said "you were wrong and we know better than you".

Voters didn't like that and stuck two fingers up by voting Tory, a party that had also taken the wind out of Labours sails with its "levelling up the north" campaign.

Does it matter that they might not deliver on this? Well in context at least they are talking about it...what did the last Labour Govt do to address the North/South divide?

These voters made the switch and guess what - the world didn't end. They gave Labour a bloody nose and they liked doing it because most people can't stand being patronised and "educated".

As per previous post I made below, the Conservatives are incredibly pragmatic about policy. It's not a matter of values or the past, it's about what wins votes right now.

Labour by contrast are mired in history, values and dubious ethics rather than policy that's relevant to addressing voter concerns.

Starmer going big on Tory sleeze and the LP wondering why it didn't resonate....

Fact is most people don't care (even if they perhaps should) about who paid for fancy interior decor.

Negative campaigning very rarely works because it indicates you have no policies that resonate with the electorate of your own - and right now Labour have very few of those plus a recent legacy of betraying long standing voters by trying to stop Brexit.

It a mess and frankly I can't see a way through it whilst the membership retains its very left wing majority and the power it's able to exert over the Parliamentary Labour Party.

Small glimmer of hope:

"Councillor Declan Mulholland says The Labour Party needs to listen to voters.

He said: "I think the Labour Party needs to relate to middle and working class people a lot more. There has been a devastating result in Hartlepool and other councils around the country. It is very sad to see.

"The Labour Party needs to listen to voters very closely and needs to offer something tangibly different to the Conservative Party."

I would love to think Labour’s unpopularity is caused by people waking up to the party’s misogyny. But it seems to be more than that

I think it all boils down to the same thing though: Labour not listening properly and writing off anyone who doesn't agree 100% with them as a bigot of some stripe. Be it Brexit, immigration, women's rights, antisemitism - it's always the same response.

Some great posts on this thread. Hope somebody in the Labour Party is reading them.

There's been a lot of discussion on Mumsnet on how to vote when it seems any vote is just enabling parties who are ignoring women's rights. But maybe the thing to do is to join a party (any party) and then contact the GC/women's rights group within it (I think they all have them). Then you can find out and vote for candidates who are GC locally and nationally, even if you don't want to get actively involved.

Locally, a few people can make a big difference.

Interesting local pov.

www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/resentment-rules-changing-times-labour-20544157

I agree with you.

Another phrase I saw thrown out with great regularity was "this needs to be a safe space for (insert whatever the issue of the day was)".

Obviously "safe space" meaning an environment where doctrine could not be challenged.

I could never get over the irony of the need for a "safe space" at the local CLP stacked with a majority of TRA's and allies to prevent "hurt feelings" whilst discussing proposals such as self id that denied women a physical safe space in places where they were incredibly vulnerable such as shelters, prisons and changing rooms.

Pro-Palestine discussions were a thin veil for anti-semitism in plain sight.

The echo chamber of social media was being played out in real life but instead of "blocking" people, any dissenting voices were bullied out of the room and eventually the party.

AfternoonToffee
My Twitter contribution is "If you voted Tory, unfollow me as we have nothing in common." This just shows the absolute tone deafness of the party and some of the voters, they have absolutely no interest whatsoever in listening to why people have stopped voting for Labour in droves. "If you don't agree with me, you're not worth knowing."

I have thought for a long time (pretty-much from its start) that social media had that effect; I watched someone I knew cease to be able to tolerate anyone who didn't agree with him until his account was entirely occupied by the like-minded, and he ended up no longer able to hear anything that didn't follow his particular party line when he met people face to face either. Ultimately I slowly and gently pouring a pint of beer over his head in a bar, which did at least get his attention.

In the election just past, I was lucky enough to have the number of candidates who were independent but not "Freedom Alliance" needed for all my votes, so I didn't have to vote for any of the parties. If I hadn't had that choice, I might have put a blank ballot into the box.

I left the LP quite a few years ago over self Id and the fact my CLP had become overrun by Momentum supporters who acted as self righteous "overlords", bullying long standing members if they didn't get in line (the people btw who instead of just acting as keyboard SJW's on FB and Twitter were the ones distributing campaign leaflets, speaking to the electorate and doing the party admin).

There was no debate or discussion allowed.

Frankly it had ceased to be a political party and had become an ideology.

I don't think at grass roots much has changed and that's a big problem.

A political party understands its support base and crafts policy that reflects its needs and aspirations.

The Conservative party has always been better at Labour than doing this. They are ruthlessly pragmatic.

If something isn't working they don't navel gaze about it - they change it (be it a leader, a policy or advisors).

By contrast Labour (and the Greens/Lib Dems), because they have always felt themselves to be on the side of "righteous" find it very difficult to re-boot a position once they've adopted it even if it's deeply unpopular with the electorate.

To do so would be an admission that they are the same as Conservatives in that at their core their "values" are mailable - making them not "values" at all.

But that's the difference between a political party and an ideology.

Parties should have policies, not values and those policies should be flexible to meet the needs of the country (are more specifically its support base) at any given time.

Labour is in crisis because it's been overtaken by a membership whose frankly middle class, champagne socialist "values" do not resonate with its former voting base.

Rather than acknowledging this, the response has been to believe the failure has been not one of policy but one of not "educating" the voters and that's a double whammy of not only failing to differentiate between values and policy but being simultaneously utterly patronising to the people you want to vote for you.

It's a wholly negative spiral that's further amplified by this determination to demonise anyone who thinks differently.

Former Labour voters who've switched aren't bad people (and frankly neither are regular Tory voters).

Those who've switched are frustrated and angry with a party they feel (quite rightly) has abandoned them in order to win approval from vocal middle class social justice warriors who for the most part have zero life experience of actual (or should I say literal) hardship, deprivation and inequality.

I always find Matthew Goodwin interesting to listen to about the decline of Labour:

twitter.com/talkRADIO/status/1390572411817431043

Here's his twitter: twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/with_replies

It looks increasingly as though Labour and the LibDems are run by people who think politics consists of:

-posting correctly on Twitter (lots of rainbows and BLM)
-following the correct people on Twitter
-attending policy meetings, whilst checking Twitter
-reading some authors you already agree with
-going on a woke march wearing the correct badges

Every 4/5 years when there's an election they seem genuinely taken aback that they might actually have to speak to those awful poor people, you know who go to rough pubs and football matches and stuff. Because apparently they're all allowed a vote the same as you, and sometimes they don't vote how they're supposed to.

This extends to political journalists too (notable exception is John Harris of the Grauniad, who daringly leaves London and asks normal people in unglamorous towns about their lives).

I just find it really difficult to understand the complete lack of ability to reflect.

Maybe this is why Starmer really has no hope of healing it. How do you bring together the divide? And it's three ways, I suspect - Momentum types with state programs and identity politics, Blairites who are Thatcher-light, and traditional anti-globalists looking out for the proletariat.

Starmer's role might be to get rid of dead wood, but I think it might require a pretty strong personality, both with a vision and maybe a little ruthless within the party, to take the next step.

I have read so many excellent replies on here, so on point.
From my point of view, as an ex Labour voter, I think many Labour politicians and activists actually despise the working class, consider their views ignorant or bigoted.
Well, you can only do that for so long. The last general election should have been a wakeup call for Labour (and the LibDems and Greens), but they are still in a very deep, woke slumber.

Plus, the reaction on the left to the Tories centring the flag in TV appearances etc has been counterproductive. It is a symbol which says to people post Brexit - we believe in the country, and by extension we belief in you too. Because surprise, surprise, not everyone is ashamed to be British. Most people aren't up to speed on academic arguments around decolonising the curriculum or our national institutions - again a US import - so they'll read the headlines about statutes being taken down and street names being changed and see it as part of a thread from their communities changing demographic, pressure on local services/infrastructure etc and see it as part of an ongoing attempt to undermine their sense of who they are and what their country represents. This is why the nature of the current discourse is so dire and inane - shouting bigot at people means you never have to do the hard work of understanding them. Clearly - and it isn't my intention to get into the structural racism debate as I think it's a huge problem - when people go to the polls they're thinking about their future, their job, their kids and their family and for all of those things to be happy and secure they need to believe in their leadership and their country too (let's not even get into the fact that most people - including many leftists are also aspirational for themselves and their offspring).

I'm in my 30s in London and it was the first election I haven't voted for labour on any of the options.

In terms of "outside the fwr bubble" I can say I have had these discussions with all of my close family, most of whom aren't on social media of any form, and they are the same: all lifelong labour who either found someone else to vote for or spoiled their ballot.

I will not vote for a party that has such contempt for voters, and it's not just women. Their attitude that if you're an ethnic minority or working class then you're a traitor to not give them your vote is just plain offensive.

I would like to think they will get the message and change course but nothing in the last decade suggests any ability to critically assess their failings. I'm expecting holyrood to be SNP and Westminster to be Tory for another decade yet.

But most people don't want just a plan for social supports and then a notable silence on really beefing up economic opportunities and making communities viable places with good jobs.

Spot on. Voters don't want to buy into a narrative of decline, they want a narrative of opportunity.

I do feel it was a major mistake by Corbyn not to 'own' his Lexiter beliefs from his campaign to be leader onwards. TBH if he'd done that he might never have been leader. But if he were, he'd have split the Labour Party and that might actually have been better than this - but he'd have been vilified if it had happened at the time. He'd never have had the sheer charisma, oomph, ruthlessness and backing to do it, which is why he was so obviously not leader material.

I really think the Momentum thing is interesting, because it reveals people have such - ahem - binary thinking.

Like, you have Momentum which is far left, and then some sort of centrism like Blair embodied, and those are the two choices.

I think many people were interested in some of Corbyn's things, like nationalisation, funding public services properly, and so on. Part of the problem was they weren't sure if he'd be able to do it, but they supported those ideas in the abstract.

But most people don't want just a plan for social supports and then a notable silence on really beefing up economic opportunities and making communities viable places with good jobs. Not expecting everyone to move to London, get a $$$$degree, and work in an office. Not to mention when people try and talk about related core leftist ideas like movement of labour they get called bigots.

In that sense Momentum wasn't far left, and their voters wanted real leftist politics. If Corbyn had been allowed to be honest about his Brexit views - a real leftist position as opposed to supporting globalist trading blocks - that would have gone over well with traditional Labour voters.

And then identity politics - again, not leftist - but also people were not so keen on the cozying up to regimes that seemed, you know, pretty oppressive even if they were politically left.

All in all, it's not a problem of just be more or less left.