Westminstenders: Election Special 3

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Just looking at some of the northern constituencies and comparing to 2017 it seems mostly to be the Brexit party that swung it. Some of the tory win margins are very tight.

So I'm not so sure that it's about traditional labour voters turning tory (even if for one election only) rather than traditional Labour voters either staying at home or voting brexit party, and the tory Party picking up floating voters.

Johnson seems to be buying into (or perpetuating) the narrative that it was the traditional Labour voters that won it and he must prove himself to them. IF this narrative sticks and IF he manages to look like he is at least improving things for them, it would go a long way to removing the stigma that a lot of labour voters have (especially the younger ones who will not recall the Thatcher years) regarding voting Conservative in time for the next election - when they won't have the Brexit party (hopefully).

In the end most people vote in their own interests, not others’. So if the perception is that Labour has not and will not look after me and mine, if the agenda benefits others (the elite, my workshy neighbours, immigrants, illegals), then why not vote elsewhere? Especially if reading a manifesto and thinking about it is an alien concept (applies to many, including me much of the time).

You also need to look at where people get their information from. Not everybody has the ability, interest, time, motivation etc to seek out alternative sources of information. Therefore, what they see on the front pages of the papers is probably their guiding info.

And, while you could say that people should find this stuff out, if you're time poor, then when will you find the time to do it?

The turkeys have been told that Christmas is a good thing. Sadly, they believed it.

I have been thinking and might have to retract my comments about Bedford being southern. Bedford is somewhere and nowhere (Bill Bryson was especially untaken by Bedford!) especially now it remains a little dot of red in a sea of blue (apart from Luton)stubbornly ignoring the Swing. St Albans has also become spiritually different from 'the south'. Perhaps they should from their own republic! Imagine how lovely the world would be if it was all like St Albans.

I have spent most of the time I have lived in Bedford vaguely bewailing its mindset and blandness but must admit I am rather proud of its stubbornness this week!

I'd still go back to Scotland like a shot if I could though!

I think the cabinet will be godawful

Well most of the available candidates are godawful.

I think the inews said there'll be minor changes now to replace ministers who've gone like Zac Goldsmith.

Then after ' Brexit' day there'll be the fuller reshuffle. The article mentioned JRM and Loathsome maybe going? Then Gove being in charge of a merged Brexit/ International trade department?

I'm not prepared to think the working class

A.) don't exist.

They do.
And they are very aware - if they ever go so far as attending a Momentum meeting - that there is a world of difference between them and the 'New Working Class' of architects & lawyers who are pissed off about not being able to afford to buy a house.

The pissed off architects have a place in the changed political landscape - their grievance is real, along with their perception that interests require a left-wing politics.

But they are positioned very differently to the working class, with interests, experiences, subjectivities and political objectives that may overlap sometimes but not always.

Simple elision of differences or a rough communitarianism is patronising and - ultimately - dangerous for the working class.

Working class people know this.

B) Are stupid.

See the above.

There are very good reasons why working class people are going to get pissed off about 25 year old lecturers telling them they need to love Corbyn, and ... anything really.

They have lived their lives with class oppression (yes, that old term,) & can sense an implicit authoritarian, patronising power-dynamic - however it is dressed up.

You know, if nothing else, this GE has finally given us the power to say Owen Jones et al were wrong.

When they irritated the shit out of us, we were with a majority of people.

That 'being irritated' was an early warning system that should have been heeded.

I'm not thinking about the gender stuff here - but about the whole tone - which was incredibly dismissive and top-down and fundamentally appropriative.

Owen Jones and many others claimed - in fact seized the right to speak in the name of the working class, the oppressed, etc. - and used that as a means not to listen - which is a form of silencing.

No-one appreciates having that done to them.

🤷‍♀️

Even if what you are saying, or promising, is a good thing.

No wonder people resisted, with the limited means available to them.

(

I think this (B) is a lot of what is behind the statement, 'I don't trust Corbyn'.

Only silver lining of all this is the wake up call to labour. I also have university friends who think Corbyn is the bees knees and don’t get why people don’t vote for him. Well now they know! The majority of my labour supporting friends though are the same as me- they’ve seen him as a disaster from day 1.

Yes, Pigeon.

For me, one of the very worst things about this GE has been going out canvassing knowing the Leader was a bloody disaster.

I am actually still trying to find the words to express the full dimensions of that.

I have Labour friends still backing Corbyn.

That’s verging on delusional ohyoubadbadkitten

And it is kind of a relief to actually be able to say it.

And my silence before wasn't just because I didn't want to put off voters, give the opposition more ammunition, or demoralise people.

It was also because I knew I would be shouted down.

Not on here, but by Labour members and supporters who would have told me I was a victim of mainstream media, a dupe of right-wing propaganda, a Red Tory, a centrist melt, wasn't sufficiently woke enough, didn't believe in the progressive programme enough.

It's a form of bullying - and it's delusional madness.

It's refusing the actual evidence in front of your eyes.

To the point that I even found myself wondering if I was wrong.

Well, no, I wasn't.

It's bloody terrible.

And Owen Jones was fucking wrong about history.

Those of us who lived through the 80s know that progressive history doesn't just fucking unfurl like a carpet.

You have to fight - hard- and part of that fight is winning hearts and minds. Not just bloody telling snd bullying people into what they should think.

History is what people make not what they are given.

Right side of history my fucking arse.

And, no, I'm not thinking of gender issues.

I'm thinking primarily of all the stuff on climate change. Which is pressing. And where we really, really haven't communicated the issues yet.

Not because 'people are thick' but because communication is actual hard work, that needs to be done by real people, in real time.

And a whole raft of other stuff.

You have to do the work.

It's more than just shouting at people on Twitter.

It's actual, real activism and persuasion.

m.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/mccluskey-corbyn-defeat-blame-anti-semitism-metropolitan-manifesto_uk_5df3ba57e4b0ca713e5ee6bb?8kj

Delusional.

This man is as big a part of the problem as Corbyn.

Me too, OhYouBadBadKitten.

I have lots.

It really doesn't augur well.

☹️

It's what has broken my vow not to be negative.

I'm here, posting, partly because I think I need help working out the words that can break through a really damaging delusion.

I’m somehow failing to grasp which parts of the Labour manifesto could be interpreted as favouring the ‘elite’. But probably as part of said elite, I don’t have a clue what most people think. I’m just confused, basically

How much do you all feel this is a vote to specifically get immigration down? Freedom of movement or the end of it seems to be the determining factor in the type of brexit we get.
No FOM = no single market
So not the Norway or Switzerland models.
Of course i think FOM isn't the issue as illustrated by the growth of non EU immigration despite the hostile environment but Tories have campaigned on FoM = mass immigration.
Was this the main driver?

Cat

Well done for sticking with it.

I've got to say I was almost relieved on Friday morning. Not that BJ is PM - that is scary.

But that Corbyn wasn't.

Yes I voted for Labour and I still think it's a shame my local candidate was not elected as I think she would have done good. But Labour is rotten now.

They need to start from scratch and rebuild.

And they need to take away the power of the Unions.

Well Len McCluskey in particular.

Nail on the head, Cat. There was no acceptance that the British public just don’t vote for major change to the left. It doesn’t matter how passionately you think they’re right if people won’t vote for them (and the media won’t get behind them). We’re essentially a right wing country (which doesn’t make me happy but it’s reality). Change needs to gradual and if you’re labour, built on existing trust. The British public hold labour to a different bar. It’s not right but it is what it is.

I get the sense that amongst the disaffected poor & vulnerable who voted Conservative rather than Labour (or who chose not to vote knowing that it would let a Conservative in), there is an element of "Stockholm Syndrome" in that they now identity with their "captor and believe that if they're nice to him, he'll be nice back.

It's particularly strong in England because there is no hope of escape

I have a few momentum type friends on Facebook.

They seem to be blaming the moderate (or right wing, as they call it) branch of the party and are bewailing the fact that Jeremy Corbyn is stepping down.

On a personal level, I think Corbyn is probably a very decent fella. But there's huge swathes of the population that would never vote for him. And with an unelectable leader, Labour are little more than a lobby group.

I don't think the whole 'youthquake' thing actually does him any favours in any event. Students are perceived as being politically naive (not an idea I necessarily agree with - but it's an idea that's out there) and idealistic. I do think it supports the perception that a lot of labour policies are 'a nice idea but not practical' and that labour themselves are a bit feckless.

The manifesto was way less of a problem than

• the Leader
• failing to prepare the ground for that manifesto

People talk about the 'grassroots' nature of the manifesto.
But
The 'grassroots' were members who were largely involved in Momentum workshops, sctivists in pressure groups and campaigns and so on.

There is enormous validity in all of that

BUT

Think about this:

The New Labour manifesto had a serious position on the delivery of benefits to single mothers, based on research into the causes of child poverty.

This manifesto promised to repeal UC - and replace it with what?

Given the shocking impact of austerity on actual people thst is one hell of a gaping hole.

I wonder how many actually did vote Conservative, as opposed to just not voting

This - when you look at the actual numbers from Constituencies, you can't see a massive increase for the Tories in many of them. You can see a drop in Labour and increased support for the Brexit party.

So not many votes 'lent' as votes not given to Labour as usual.

I really hope that there is an increase in investment in these areas. That's got to be a good thing - but how much of that state and social investment is against 'traditional' Tory ways - because the money has to come from somewhere. There is also going to be a massive debate about the new Brexit deal and how it affects those new Tory constituencies - jobs and ease of trade.

Some interesting debates in the Tory party lie ahead.

Discovered one of my sisters voted Tory in a Tory safe seat. She would have voted LD if they had had a hope but they didn’t. She and her DH are very strongly Remain and his business has been affected by Brexit. But she said they ‘just want to get Brexit over with’ now. It feels like a betrayal. I don’t know if I can forgive her.

My above post was in response to this:

I wonder how many actually did vote Conservative, as opposed to just not voting

Why could they just have not voted. How Remainers just gave up and voted Tory?