To actually be really cross with Labour for letting this happen?

[RunBackwards]

How did they manage to be so bad at the last two elections that places like Mansfied ended up Tory?

The Tories were just laughing at them last time around when they stuck with Corbyn because it made their victory incredibly easy.

Dear lord, people have short memories. Labour had their best election result since 2001 in 2017 - highest vote share since 2001, and the first time Labour gained seats in 20 years. 40% of the vote, despite the “unelectable” campaign. They certainly ramped things up after that, didn’t they? Why bother if he was no threat? Do you not remember the headlines - companies allegedly preparing to pull out of the U.K. if Labour won? Both elections. Just part of the mass scale manipulation of the British public. And look where it has left us. Brilliant.

The triumph of ideological purity over political common sense

Labour has to accept that the British public is essentially moderate and Momentum or the like will never change that

Momentum would have been mainstream in the Labour party that the country voted for in 1947. And they voted for Harold Wilson's Labour party 4 times in the 60s and & 70s, with policies that would be considered well to the left of the Labour party days.

The whole spectrum of UK politics has shifted massively to the right, sadly.

Corbyn was an absolute fucking idiot who would see the U.K. dragged back into the Marxists time. I’m surprised they didn’t lose more seats.

Sorry, missing word - "Labour Party these days".

Corbyn was an absolute fucking idiot who would see the U.K. dragged back into the Marxists time. I’m surprised they didn’t lose more seats.

When do you think “the Marxists time” was?

@Deathgrip

Do people not feel embarrassed parroting Murdoch soundbytes? I guess it’s easier to blame Labour than admit you were manipulated, but there was nothing unelectable about Corbyn, particularly when compared to the fact that this country elected Boris fucking Johnson, the least electable man I’ve ever laid eyes on.

I’m astonished that people are still so hoodwinked.

What precisely was so unelectable about Corbyn, aside from you being told how unelectable he was? Unelectable was literally a Thick Of It joke. Do you honestly think this is your own independent opinion, that he was unelectable, despite so many posters using the same word.

It’s embarrassing.

I think you and I come from a very similar place, politically speaking @Deathgrip.

Just reading some of the words used about Corbyn, like avarice and arrogance, is mind boggling for anyone who's met him and discussed politics with him. They make him sound like some selfish Machiavelli, when irl he's very nice, mild mannered, thoughtful and genuinely cares about people.

@RunBackwards

How did they manage to be so bad at the last two elections that places like Mansfied ended up Tory?

Because these towns were obsessed with Brexit and thought it'd cure all their problems and Labour tried to stop it.

@headstrong27

To me the labour party has become toxic & I hate all the identity politics. Who do they represent, they can't even decide amongst themselves.

Who do the Tories represent? It certainly isn't ordinary people.

For me, Labour had an open goal in 1997 with a huge majority to massively change the fabric of Britain for the better and they didn't. What little they did was quickly dismantled the moment the Tories got back in.

No doubt across the three main parties the white working class, especially, have been ignored for too long which has led to the ridiculousness of the Tories winning in ex-mining towns, safe Labour areas and Brexit.

Labour are racist bigots, plain and simple

Which party has returned the most black MPs, @contrmary? Which party's members campaigned against the National Front and the BNP? Which party was most represented among those who campaigned against apartheid, or ran the first council to have a black chief executive (and, iirc, the first black woman chief executive?)?

In discussing the 2019 election, arguments about policy and intent are superfluous IMO. It was an election specifically called to unblock the jam the UK found itself in due to the Brexit vote.

The Tories slogan was Get Brexit Done. The Lib Dems said they would stop Brexit. Both of those were clear policies, easy to understand. Both parties increased their vote share - the Lib Dems were undone, as usual, by the electoral system and those extra votes didn't translate into more seats.

Labour couldn't agree amongst themselves and presented the electorate with a scenario where Corbyn would spend three months negotiating a Brexit deal with the EU. This would then be put to a further referendum, whereupon several senior Labour ministers would, by their own admission, campaign enthusiastically to undo the work of those three months. Corbyn felt it wouldn't be appropriate for him to take a side.

So, basically, Labour would spend their first few months in power creating a new arrangement with the EU and then the next few months encouraging the public to reject it. That has to be one of the least coherent positions ever adopted by a mainstream party, and it was their policy on the central issue of the election.

I don't like Rupert Murdoch either but none of this was his fault.

I just blame Tories for being lower than vermin and creating evil policies that ruin people's lives. There's really nobody else to blame. If only all politicians had good intentions for their communities and for the UK generally, as Corbyn did and others like him. Don't drag Corbyn into the evil shit show that Tories have created with their evil ideology.

And ✊ to @Deathgrip and @LakieLady

In the first few posts we hear that the voters are to blame...

Well yes. That is democracy for you. Labour are only talking to themselves. The only time they notice the electorate is when they want to blame them for getting it wrong.

We badly need a better opposition and ultimately an opposition that can win. But Labour are too busy being Labour and talking amongst themselves (only taking time out to alienate women and give succour to antisemites) to be that opposition. Keir is moving slowly in the right direction but the treatment of Rosie Duffield is evidence of the cancer at the heart of the party.

It pains me. I’ve never voted Tory. I wrote to my Conservative mp in May. She hasn’t bothered to reply. I am without representation and see no prospect of any improvement. Labour have let me down.

I'm more annoyed with them putting Oliver Cromwell in charge of Wales right now TBH.

Labour couldn't agree amongst themselves and presented the electorate with a scenario where Corbyn would spend three months negotiating a Brexit deal with the EU. This would then be put to a further referendum, whereupon several senior Labour ministers would, by their own admission, campaign enthusiastically to undo the work of those three months. Corbyn felt it wouldn't be appropriate for him to take a side.

So, basically, Labour would spend their first few months in power creating a new arrangement with the EU and then the next few months encouraging the public to reject it. That has to be one of the least coherent positions ever adopted by a mainstream party, and it was their policy on the central issue of the election.

I don't like Rupert Murdoch either but none of this was his fault.

Your third paragraph here contradicts your previous two. The very fact that you believe this shows precisely how effective Murdoch et al were.

You’re essentially criticising a party who understood that the nation was split on this issue, and voted without having any real information about what it would mean, should have the opportunity to vote based on an actual deal.

Yes, much better to have a soundbyte eh, even if it’s bullshit. Oven ready? And yet still it’s Corbyn being criticised, not the outright liars elected by the people of this country.

No, nothing to do with Murdoch at all.

@deathgrip Well whatever the meaning and intent of the Labour Brexit policy, labour certainly failed to explain it coherently or to win the electorate over to their view (a fundamental part of politics).

So perhaps blame the Labour policy & PR team instead of Corbyn. But it was still a shit show.

@Deathgrip I'm the one you quoted and like the poster above I think you should be looking to blame Labour for their own incoherence over Brexit. I'm not sure the problem was Corbyn but the lack of discipline from other senior figures.

Starmer, Thornberry, Diane Abbott et al should have been told to parrot something like "We are committed to getting a Brexit deal, we are committed to putting that deal to a public vote, and I personally will decide which side to support based on the merits of the deal". There was no need for them to say they wouldn't support Corbyn's deal under any circumstances, it just undermined him.

You could say in that case, the defeat is on them - but politicians are self-serving and therefore highly predictable. They won't hesitate to stab a weak leader in the back, but will always publicly support someone who looks like a winner. I saw a documentary on Thatcher in which Michael Heseltine was interviewed and made no secret of his disdain for her policies, or his contempt for her intellectual ability compared to his own. However, he served in her cabinet and even after resigning didn't dare challenge her immediately.

You may disagree, but I think Labour politicians behave in a broadly similar way. If they thought Corbyn was going to win, they would have supported his policy and thus he would have looked more credible.

So you're mad at Labour/Corbyn because loads of people voted for the Tories and the Tories have behaved in exactly the way Labour/Corbyn warned you about.

Alright then.

I don’t think labour would have won the last election even under a different leader like Starmer. The working class towns who voted the tories in also voted leave and Boris rather cleverly pushed the whole ‘let’s get Brexit done’ bullshit throughout the election hence why the working class voted for the tories. It really was a case of turkeys voting for Christmas. The right wing media has a lot to answer for imo.

I should be a labour voter. All the generations before me were. We live under the Welsh government labour controlled and it is a shower of shit. NHS is run to the ground and now we have this lockdown killing small shops. Be careful what you wish for. The grass is not always greener on the other side. Champagne socialists just out for themselves really.

I think it’s so long that Labour held power, that people have forgotten how crap it was under Labour. I’m someone who might be classed as a floating voter. I listen to the party and their manifestos, listen to the candidates, and base my opinion accordingly. It’s literally years since I voted Labour. They’ve totally lost their way, and in the last election didn’t have anything on the table to sway voters their way. And they had a leader in Corbyn who was invisible and showed very little passion in anything. The Tories had a crap year, and any half decent opposition party would have wiped the floor with them. It was an opportunity missed, and absolutely their fault that didn’t engage with with the party faithful.

Deathgrip
You’re essentially criticising a party who understood that the nation was split on this issue, and voted without having any real information about what it would mean, should have the opportunity to vote based on an actual deal.

Did Labour plan to extend the voting franchise (to include the 3 million EU citizens resident in the UK) before or after the new Brexit vote?

Their manifesto;
"We will oversee the largest extension of the franchise in generations, reducing the voting age to 16, giving full voting rights to all UK residents"

It just struck me that when any thread on politics happens, who are we all talking about and discussing?
Corbyn of course.

He is still, like him, loathe him, or look at him from a balanced view, the most interesting thing to have happened in British politics for a generation or more. He brought something back that we haven’t had for a long time - the dim possibility of options, choice and discussion.

I still totally agree with his original vision of a need for a new kind of politics, however badly it went wrong or for what reasons. We need to re-found it along the same lines as other professional endeavours. With a broad agreement on our aims - the best outcome for the biggest number of people - and then become evidence-led. Evidence-led in terms of what has happened in the past, and evidence-led about the present: how ideas are actually being implemented and what practical impacts they have. All to be discerned by as wide a consultation as pragmatically possible, with representatives from all ends.

This is how local government and national Parliament is supposed to work, but it has somehow gone very wrong.

Corbyn is mentioned over and over again because many feel if it wasn’t for a Corbyn led Labour Party there is a high possibility the Tories wouldn’t be in power

And people are still angry that the opposition was such a failure during the time when the country had needed a stronger opposition than ever

He was as a leader ineffectual and hasn’t done anything of significance (apart from being a failure labour party leader) in his whole political career (unless you want to believe the nonsense of him being part of the Irish peace agreement)