To ask Labour voters

[SilverySurfer]

Since Corbyn, McDonnell and Momentum appear to be continuing their grip on the Labour Party, whoever the new leader may be, do you see a time when the Party would split into two, leaving the above in one and the second being more centrist?

Initially I guess it would virtually guarantee Labour never winning an election but I wonder if you think it's likely the latter would get far more members, enough to once again become a viable opposition party?

I am a Tory but have always believed that Governments need good opposition parties, which has not been the case since Corbyn became leader.

I appreciate there's a fair number of Corbyn/Momentum fans but I would like to know what you think.

Corbyn wouldn't have been helping Cameron out, he would have been showing the leadership we expect from a leader of the opposition. He's a pathetic little man.

@SilverySurfer: Considering that half your party are (almost) reasonable people, and the other half make Mussolini look like a socialist, do you see a time when your party would split in two? Or does the joy of victimising those less fortunate serve to unite you all?

I used to be a Labour voter but stopped voting for them after the Iraq war and never went back. I vote LD or Green now. Ideologically I'm to the left but like PP I'm pragmatic in knowing what will ever be achievable in the UK.

Anyway, I joined the Labour Party the day after the election. I want it to move back to the centre-left in order to become electable again and at least if more people like me join, we get a chance (however small) to try to influence the direction of the party.

I think it could take until the election after next, so possibly ten years, for Labour to become electable again. In a two-party system the public will probably be fed-up with the incumbents by then anyway. Although with Brexit, the usual political rule-book has been torn up, so who knows what could happen.

I also think that the future if the LP is with young people. I know it is traditional for people to move to the right as they get older, I read that the age people are doing this is getting older - past 45. Labour needs to try to keep the younger voters that it has attracted for longer. Targeted policies about climate change, housing etc.

Why, specifically, are you proud of being a Tory? It's a genuine question, because (as a Corbyn supporter) it's something I've never really understood. Is it the policies that you're proud of, or is it something along the lines of your family has always voted Tory, and you're proud to uphold the tradition? It's something I'd be really interested in understanding, because I've been so surprised at the latest election result, and I'm wondering whether I've missed something crucial about Tory plans for the country and it's residents.

I've posted this before on other threads.

About a year ago, I read an article about a professor in PPE who devised a software programme into which he entered key phrases from the manifestos of all UK party leaders over the last fifty years. The software analysed and then produced a line chart placing each leader on a Left/Right spectrum.

Unsurprisingly, the biggest gap was between Neil Kinnock and Margaret Thatcher. What surprised me, though, was that Tony Blair was to the right of John Major. It does explain 1997, though, and also explains much of the angst between Blairites and Corbynites today.

On the spectrum, Tony Blair was also still slightly to the right of Theresa May, which also explains much of the unhappiness within the Conservative Party (Brexit aside).

Jeremy Corbyn is very very left of Neil Kinnock.

I cannot, for the life of me, remember where I read the article. I've searched for it since in vain. It predates Boris's leadership. However, my own view is that Boris is occupying the space vacated by Tony Blair (pre-Iraq). He is - and I'm sure there are many who will disagree about this - a One Nation Tory. One Nation Tories are on the left of the Party, as opposed to Thatcherites, who are on the right of the Party.

In other words, Boris is as left as the Conservatives will tolerate, and as right as traditional working class Labour will tolerate. In my view. It's a very careful positioning.

The Momentum version of Labour has been comprehensively rejected and the Labour Party will have to decide how to respond to that. I too want to see a functioning Opposition; our democracy depends on it. However, Labour will either have to change its policies or change the electorate.

Inclined to agree with you at least on that @SingingLily .
You feel win elections by making the centre hold their nose and vote for extremes.

You don't win elections ... not you feel win.

Thank you, Bellini. Yes, that's exactly my point. For most voters, there's a degree of tolerance required to even vote...and with that, there's a limit. Anything outside the zone of tolerance is rejected.

The research mentioned by Singinglily is very insightful. But I wouldn’t make the same conclusion. It was research into the manifesto rather than the leader’s politics. It tells us that Blair had to reach out to the middle classes in the SE to get a majority. May needed to get the “just getting by” people in the midlands and north on side. She failed in this but it was basically the strategy used by Boris.

The Labour Party doesn’t need to adopt Blair’s policies but they do need to adopt his strategy. That is, they need to be electable to do any good. Being unelectable in the pursuit of pure ideology is just plain daft.

The Tory party does this very well. They are ruthless in their pursuit of government. They will ditch unpopular leaders and policies to achieve this. In the end they get to govern and they get to do some of what they want.

Corbyn and his supporters ditched and purged the electable wing of their party.

The scale of the infighting in the Labour party is also putting voters off. We need a party that is united in voice and one that gets behind its leader. Ultimately, Labour primarily lost in leave areas, leave voters were sick of a remain government blocking Brexit, they knew that only conservatives were going to move forward on it and did not want the second referendum put forward by Labour. Labour are too busy playing the blame game to sit up and listen to their voters.

I’m sure there were original remain voters who thought no thanks to a second referendum. It’s been a stalemate for so long.

Keir Starmer is positioning himself as a potential candidate for the leadership, and praising both Momentum and the more Blairite elements of the party. How could these two groups ever see eye to eye however?

The centrists proved they were unelectable prior to Corbyn taking over.

I liked Ed Milliband as a person but people did not want another party supporting austerity. And people still don't trust Labour on the economy after the Blair/Brown government (not saying that is a correct analysis but that is the pervading one).

I agree with you, LemonTT, even if you didn't reach the same conclusion about the views of the leader versus what the manifesto said. It's not a fluke that the Conservative Party is often cited as the oldest and most successful political party in the world. It is, indeed, ruthless about changing its leader and its policies in order to win.

However, that's why I believe that its current position has been carefully staked out in order to change the political narrative - and in that, it has been massively successful.

Anyone who believes, however, that Labour lost solely or primarily because of its ambiguous Brexit position might want to consider this polling data.

It wasn't just Brexit.

These Labour voters either lent their votes to the Conservatives or the LibDems (and it is worth noting that the same polling source says that 300,000 Labour Remainers voted Conservative) or, in many many cases, just stayed home.

Haven't RTFT but I hope so.

Momentum are cringe idiots with misogynistic ideas and while I personally admire Corbyn, I don't and never really have thought he was centralist or appealing enough to appeal to certain labour voters.

I am devastated by the election because it will be a never before seen event for Labour to get into power at the next election now. It's very disheartening but all we can do is muddle through and hope we don't suffer too much under a conservative government.

The centrists proved they were unelectable prior to Corbyn taking over.

And Corbyn couldn't win despite two attempts.

Perhaps it's just the Labour party itself that can't win.

I wouldn't have said Ed Milliband nor Gordon Brown were centralists - they were both well to the left of Blair, the only Labour leader to win GEs in the last 50 years - doesn't that say something???

I know that the real responsibility lies with Cameron and the Tories, but the opposition could have helped us avoid the last three years of turmoil, and now having to leave the EU, which has and is going to make us a lot poorer.

The opposition have helped by opposing and making it far more difficult to leave. Had they been centrists and similar to the government, we'd have left already. Prior to 2016, campaigning for leave more than Corbyn did (and he did!) wouldn't have helped as he was a new leader with very little following with the general public and Labour supporters were always very divided on Brexit.

Ed Milliband was a terrible choice by Labour - that’s what his results prove.

Labour need to make better leadership choices.

I liked Ed Milliband as a person but people did not want another party supporting austerity.

The country had a massive deficit of over £100 billion per year - whoever won the 2010 and 2015 GE's would have to make savage cuts to get that under control.

Interestingly, the feedback on the doorstep was quite positive about the manifesto. The main problems were dislike of Corbyn (most smeared UK politician ever?) and wanting to ensure brexit happened. I live somewhere that labour lost to conservative this time. So I'm not sure being too left wing is the real problem, it's just newspapers tell people it is.

I wouldn't have said Ed Milliband nor Gordon Brown were centralists - they were both well to the left of Blair, the only Labour leader to win GEs in the last 50 years - doesn't that say something???

Kazzy, that's spot on. That's exactly what the analysis said about Ed Milliband and Gordon Brown. It was Ed who opened the door to the current situation because he was trying to contain the fallout at Falkirk.

I realise this is a "what if", but if the other Milliband had won...

Ed got the vote for leader because as usual the unions backed the one more to the left. But again that big gap between the old guard at Labour and the electorate was too big.

Perhaps it's just the Labour party itself that can't win

Well, in the last 100 years or so the Conservatives have positioned themselves as the natural party of government, and there have been a lot more Conservative governments than Labour ones. So it has always been a struggle to convince the establishment and the very wealthy that the working person is at all important and should have policies which actually help them.

So the question remains.

How are Labour going to respond?

More of the same is clearly not the answer, however much some might wish for it.