Canadian Politics Today

After the initial Brexit referendum, a lot of people thought that it was a one-off mistake, that people had been deceived or that they voted out of anger or frustration, that once they had some time to look at what Brexit would really mean, they'd reconsider.

Brexit was the main focus of the election, and the Brexit Guy won by a landslide.   I think it's fair at this point to conclude that maybe the British people really do want Brexit.

But I have also read a lot of extremely negative things about the Labour Party in wake of the election.  This was the most crushing defeat for Labour in something like 80 years. Remember in the 2016 US election there was the talk about the Democrats' "Blue Wall" states, and how when some of those formerly safe states went for Trump, Clinton lost the election?  In the aftermath of the UK election, there has been a lot of talk about the Labour Party's "Red Wall" in the Midlands collapsing. These are seats that had elected Labour MPs in every election for generations, but suddenly voted Tory in this election.  These were blue-collar seats with backgrounds in mining and manufacturing that lean heavily toward small-L labour, and until now had always voted big-L Labour as a result.  But now many small-L labour voters seem to question whether the Labour Party really represents them anymore. Just as some portion of the traditionally Democrat-supporting Rust Belt voters swung Republican in 2016.

Why did some US blue-collar Democrats swing to the Republicans in 2016? Why did many UK Midlands Labour voters swing to the Tories in 2019?

In the UK, a big factor appears to be Jeremy Corbyn.  From what I have been reading, Corbyn is less popular than mosquito bites, de-alcoholized beer, and Ebola. People can't stand him. People who hate Boris Johnson still voted for Boris Johnson because the idea of Corbyn becoming PM made them physically ill. Jeremy Corbyn himself appears to be a huge problem for the Labour Party. 

But some argue that it's not just Corbyn who is the problem, but Labour's current hard-left ideology and platform that make them unelectable. There seems to be some who feel that the party has been taken control of by ideologues who are committed to far-left ideas, and don't seem to particularly care whether they can actually get elected or not:

Example A:

Of course, this relates not just to Corbyn but Corbynism. For the last four years, Labour has been in thrall to the notion that it’s better to have a manifesto you can feel proud of, a programme that calls itself radical, than to devise one that might have a chance of winning. Some even argued that, “win or lose”, Corbyn achieved much simply by offering a genuinely socialist plan – in contrast with Labour’s 1997 offer, which was so boringly modest and incremental.
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Well, guess what. Labour’s “radical” manifesto of 2019 achieved precisely nothing. Not one proposal in it will be implemented, not one pound in it will be spent. It is worthless. And if judged not by the academic standard of “expanding the discourse”, but by the hard, practical measure of improving actual people’s actual lives, those hate figures of Corbynism – Tony Blair and Gordon Brown – achieved more in four hours than Corbyn achieved in four years. Why? Because they did what it took to win power.

That’s what a political party is for. It’s not a hobby; it’s not a pressure group that exists to open the Overton window a little wider; it’s not an association for making friends or hosting stimulating conversations and seminars; it’s not “a 30-year project”. Its purpose is to win and exercise power in the here and now. It is either a plausible vehicle for government or it is nothing.

Example B:

That is the threat that faces the Labour party today. A party created to represent working people and unite their interests across the country is being rejected by the people it was made for.

And after four election defeats, with our support base eroded to its foundations in urban South Wales and major English cities, we must recognise before it’s too late that we’re not just losing market share, we’re now at risk of going bust.

Yet the current Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, not only fails to see this existential threat, he says we “won the argument” last Thursday and need just one more heave for the electorate to come to its senses.

Some in Labour seemed surprised by this response. Sadly, I am not and have always feared that for Mr Corbyn and his closest confidants winning power and the mundane business of governing to improve lives always come second to the higher purpose of “winning the argument”. For the community I represented in South Wales, and for millions of people across the UK, nothing could be further from the truth.
(...)
The choice now facing Labour is simple. We can recognise these truths and move swiftly on from Mr Corbyn and Corbynism, and put a credible investing and reforming agenda to the people next time. Or we can refuse to compromise with the electorate, select a new leader in Mr Corbyn’s image and consign our party to another defeat, maybe even extinction. To do so would be to deny Britain the option of a progressive, competent centre-left government that so many yearn for.

To what extent did Labour sabotage themselves by aligning themselves with political philosophies that are out-of-touch with the electorate, ideas that are too far out of the mainstream for even the traditional Labour voter?

Do the US Democrats risk doing the same to themselves in 2020?


 -k