Someone I know rather well is very much of the opinion that, unless there’s some sort of discomfort or self-denial involved in any activity, it’s not worth doing. There’s a puritanical streak in this philosophy which I recognise from teaching about the 17th Century, but initially, coming from a frankly hedonistic “if there’s chocolate on the table, eat it before anyone else does” background, I found it a bit weird and annoying. Actually, who am I trying to kid? I still find it a bit weird and annoying. However, the one advantage it offers is that events which cause intense irritation to the rest of us, make her feel nobler, even happier. So a thunderstorm on a day out is ‘bracing’; forgetting snacks on a long walk makes the food at the destination all the more deserved and enjoyable; spending hours stuck in a miserable airport somehow makes the holiday that much more fun. I have to tell you, however, that even she is struggling to find much of a redeeming silver-lining of godly sacrifice in the almighty kicking Labour got in yesterday’s EU elections.
Losing isn’t fun, but there’s losing and there’s LOSING
The 2017 General Election may not have been a win, but in massively increasing the absolute number of voters and the vote share, depriving the Tories of their majority, winning previously unheard of seats in Westminster and Canterbury, and generally sticking two fingers up at the doomsayers, was undeniably fun. Only the most bitter opponent of post-2015 Labour (I’m looking at you, John Woodcock), would deny the silver linings. The 2018 local elections were fine. Even the 2019 locals, while more ‘bracing’, had some plus points in different localities which made the outcome seem less painful that it might have been, as well as the satisfaction of not sharing in the full miserable downpour which tipped on to the Tories’ heads. Yesterday though, not so much.
Grim, grim, grim.
The most predictable thing about these elections, other than the coup de grace being delivered to the hopeless – and hapless – CHUK/TIG/2012AgainPlease mob, was that the day after the results, everyone would announce that their opinions from the day before had been confirmed. And so it was.
Hardcore Remainers insisted that they had won the new referendum, largely by counting the Labour vote as Remain (having said up until 24 hours previously that it was a pro-Brexit party which mustn’t be touched by any Remainer), and by not counting the Tories as Leave (ditto). Leavers insisted that, no, THEY had won the new referendum, because collective vote share of the two pseudo-fascist parties was, at about 34%, some 18% less than the Leave vote in the 2016 referendum. Just to put the icing on the cake, a ferocious online battle then broke out between different Labour Party sub-groups (what’s that you say? You didn’t notice anything different? Fair point), where both accused the other side of sabotage, incompetence, failure, stupidity and an inability to understand that Leave/Remain (delete according to preference) had in fact won.
Me, I reached for the old Yeats cliché which is my default when I have no clue what I think:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Having no clue what I think is something which is becoming more and more common these days. Cards on the table, I backed the strategy Labour have been pursuing since 2016. Not because I thought it was great, but because I thought it had the least substantial filling amongst the range of faecal sandwiches on offer.
But that policy relied on a couple of presumptions remaining true. The first was that Remainers frustrated by the lack of an explicit anti-Brexit stance were less likely to desert Labour than Leavers annoyed by any hint of an anti-Brexit stance. The second was that the Tories would collapse before the pigeons really came home to roost with Labour, and in the ensuing general election we’d win a majority, after which all bets were off.
To be honest, until a few weeks ago, that was looking likely to play out as planned.
It’s hard to remember this, but it’s only 25 days since the local elections. In those locals, Labour lost 84 councillors to the Tories’ 1,330. Of course the hostile commenterati and Right whined that any “normal” opposition at this time in a “normal” Parliament would be winning squillions of seats and a thousand percent of the votes. But then, they would, wouldn’t they? The more realistic amongst us merely noted that anyone who thinks anything since 2016 has been “normal” in politics has nothing of value to say.
These were within the range of acceptable losses under the circumstances. Nobody wanted them, but it was still perfectly legitimate to argue that any other position may well have produced a much worse outcome. Our rigid application of the conference policy was not popular with hardcore Remainers, but the great majority of the 2017 electoral coalition was still with us. The LibDem revival, such as it was, seemed to be biting into Tory territory (and seats) far more deeply than Labour turf.
Yet here we are, just over three weeks later, and even if the reaction to the results is fundamentally the same confirmation bias on both sides as it was after the locals, the picture does seem very different. 13.65% of the vote is worse than the worst-case scenarios. The fact that the Tories were obliterated and CHUK strangled at birth is no more comforting than losing a winning lottery ticket while finding a pension from a firm owned by Philip Green.
So while everyone else and their dog was trumpeting how right they were 24 hours previously, I’ve tried to work out what we can know, what we can’t know, and what the possible conclusions are. After all, there’s no point following a policy just because you followed it before, if there’s a less bad one on offer which still fits with your principles and priorities. The question is, is a less bad policy available?
Fudge or a Sandwich, Sir?
EU elections really are the most unrepresentative elections we hold in this country. They, along with local elections, are what you might call “Anorak Elections”. They tend to attract that third of the population who vote in every election they can – the most politically engaged third. There’s another third of the electorate who usually only vote in general elections, and a further third who rarely or never vote for anything. The General-Election-only third tend to be very tribal, and heavily split between Labour and Tory. This is why minor parties always do proportionally better than the two major parties in the EU and local elections – because a far higher proportion of their total vote turns out than the proportion of total Labour/Tory votes.
The turnout in this election was 37%. It might surprise many to know that this isn’t even the highest EU election turnout of the last 15 years – that was in 2004 at 38.52%. In fact, despite all the hoo-ha about Brexit, the turnout in this election was pretty standard for an EU election. Absolutely in line with every EU election since 1989. This was, without question, the anorak third coming out to play as usual.
The anorak third is certainly a large enough element of the population to move general election results (they’re about half the total of those who actually vote, after all), but it would be unjustified to assume that their passions and inclinations are reflected in the General-Election-Only third. They’re not. If the General-Election-Only third of voters weren’t motivated to come out and vote at all, then it’s a pretty hard sell to suggest that they would be motivated to shift their votes in the next General Election just because of Brexit. That Labour-Tory tribal vote is likely a lot steadier than commentators would have us believe. So there is no chance at all that Labour or the Tories would receive similar vote shares in the next general election, even if it were held next week. We need to bear that in mind.
In addition, even for the political anoraks, the EU elections are more volatile than the locals – as we can see by looking at the difference between May 2nd and May 23rd. In local elections, because voters can see a fairly clear connection between their vote and the outcome – local councillors and councils – that acts as a damper on any flights of fancy, and encourages a tendency to stick to pattern. EU elections, on the other hand, offer a free hit. Even amongst the anoraks, knowing the names of your region’s MEPs would be considered a ridiculously difficult pub quiz question. So EU elections are the perfect opportunity to kick parties and politicians, even if you already know you will return to the fold in the next local or – especially – general election.
It’s an entirely rational phenomenon, really. The more you think is at stake, the less likely you are to piss about with your vote. In the EU elections, rightly or wrongly, voters tend to see the outcome as so remote to their everyday lives that voting away from home doesn’t seem to matter to anything like the same extent as in a general election. As such, they’re a terribly unreliable guide to the next general election. In 2004 Blair got 21.9%, and still won a comfortable victory a year later. In 2014 Miliband got 24.4%, beating the Tories into third, while Farage ‘won’ with 26.6%. A year later, Cameron won a majority, Miliband got to spend more time with the EdStone, and Farage got one seat and 12.6% of the vote. So I would take any argument that these results represent a major shift which will be replicated in the next general election with a truly enormous lorry-load of salt.
We can, however, draw some conclusions.
Firstly, we can dismiss the argument that if Labour had adopted a more explicit anti-Brexit policy, it would have smashed Farage’s mob. The last time Labour got more than 40% of the vote in a Euro election was in 1994 under the temporary leadership of Margaret Beckett. We haven’t topped 26% since then, even in Blair’s pomp. In 2009, we got 15.2% under Gordon Brown, and that was when Brexit wasn’t even a thing. So to get more than the UKIP/TBP total of 34% would have been an astonishing performance, requiring a big transfer of the most committed Green, LibDem, SNP and Plaid voters to the Labour Party. That seems a bit far-fetched. Why would committed minor party loyalists vote Labour on the grounds of it being anti-Brexit, when they already had their own party which was clearly anti-Brexit? This claim is for the birds.
However, while the idea that a big win in these elections was squandered is so much rhubarb, it’s a much more persuasive case to argue that Labour certainly lost many voters it should have kept. In 2014, before the referendum, before Brexit, before Corbyn, when Miliband was still odds on to become the next PM, Labour got 24.4%. That was probably a reasonable ceiling for Labour in these elections. Vanishingly unlikely to win more Remainers from the minors, and equally unlikely to win Leavers from anywhere, given the easy availability of the Brexit Party, Labour’s best hope was to hold on to its 2014 share of the anorak third of the electorate. This it failed dismally to do, losing nearly half of its 2014 total vote. That’s a serious bashing. Even if none of Labour’s share of the General-Election-Only tribalist third of the population defected in the next general election, the loss of the 1.7m anorak voters, if it was sustained in that general election, would be enough to deliver a landslide to the Tories (if they managed to rebuild their own position – see later on).
So where did the lost 1.7m Labour anoraks go? At the moment, that depends who you ask. Some northern MPs and council leaders are claiming that many went to the Brexit Party because of Labour’s increasing nudges towards a new referendum. Speak to Londoners and the [largely hostile] media commenterati, and the opposite claim is made, that the LibDem and Green surges are made up of disillusioned Labour defectors. Pollsters will doubtless be looking into this already. However, it’s possible to draw some conclusions already in my view.
The Brexit Party and UKIP vote total was just shy of 34%. In 2014, the slightly broader collection of nationalist/fascist parties received a total of 30% of the vote. So the nationalist right only actually added 4% to its previous share. Yet Labour and Tory combined share dropped from 47.5% to 22.5%. Clearly those votes did not all go to the nationalist/fascist right. The LibDems and Greens, meanwhile, went from 13.5% in 2014 to 31.5%. It seems to me to be incontrovertible that by far the largest movement was from Tory and Labour to LibDem and Green. Any anti-PV Labour politician currently arguing that our worst problem is Leavers defecting is mistaken.
That does not mean, however, that all Labour Leave voters stayed with Labour. There are plenty of voters in that Brexit/UKIP total of 34% who voted Labour in 2017 and would be inclined to vote Labour again in a general election. So northern Labour folk are not completely mistaken when saying that some Labour voters deserted to Brexit parties, although many of them had already voted Brexit in 2014, and probably also in 2009. That fits with the post-referendum analysis that between 30 and 40% of 2017 Labour voters were Leavers. However, it seems possible to conclude that while there were certainly some additional Labour voters willing to vote Brexit in this election, their numbers are hugely overshadowed by those who deserted to Remain parties. This was a revolt of Remainers, not of Brexiteers.
What I find fascinating is that this Remainer revolt was not just a Labour to Green&LibDem revolt. It was also a Tory Remainer revolt, and this is going almost completely unremarked in the media, although I think some Tory politicians have noticed it – see Hunt’s comments about the “suicide” of a No Deal Brexit this morning. This, to me, is an interesting new development.
Until now, I’d worked on the assumption that Tory Remainers might hate Brexit, but they’re comfortable enough to be insulated from any effects, and would continue to vote Tory no matter what. In this election, they went in large numbers to the LibDems. The Tories lost some 2.2m voters from 2014, and the nationalists/fascists (the majority of whose 2014 and 2019 EU votes were already from people who voted Tory in 2017) gained less than a million by my reckoning, some of which was accounted for by the slightly increased turnout. This means that more than a million 2014 Tory voters found a new pro-Remain home for their EU election vote. That’s why the LibDems did so well.
This tends to add weight to the implication of the local elections: that the Blue Tory Remain tendency is ready and willing to shift its vote to the Yellow Tories. I would suggest that most of the LibDem vote increase was from Tory Remainers. In many cases, these will be ex-LibDems returning to the fold after having been eaten by the Tories in 2015. It’s important to note that 2014 was an unusual low point for the LibDems after four years of coalition. They were due a return to form of some sort, and it was always likely to come from the Tory direction, because that’s where much of it had disappeared to in the first place.
Of the lost Labour 1.7m, it split roughly half and half between the LibDems and Greens, with a smaller number to the SNP/PC in Scotland and Wales. Again, some of those Labour to LibDem transfers will be ex-LibDems who had defected to Labour as a result of the coalition.
So this election WAS a Remainer protest. It was three and a half million anorak voters abandoning the Tory and Labour Parties, with the great majority of those heading to LibDem and Green parties.
What does this mean for policy? The answer unfortunately, depends on what you choose to believe about the permanency of that shift.
Those who want to argue that Labour has to adopt a harder anti-Brexit stance will argue that the shift is permanent, and can only be reversed by rolling out the “Bollocks to Brexit” bunting. Those who don’t want to make that shift in policy have been arguing that Labour risks losing more in the direction of pro-Brexit parties.
My view, for what it’s worth – which I recognise is not very much, as I’m hardly John Curtice – is that this latter argument doesn’t stand up. Labour simply didn’t lose anything like as many votes to the nationalist/fascist parties as it did to the Remain Green/LibDems. And those that we DID lose to Farage were unlikely to include significant new numbers who hadn’t already voted Farage in 2009 and 2014, but who then nevertheless came back to Labour in subsequent General Elections.
One argument against a policy shift is that the General-Election-Only third of voters remains remarkably unperturbed by the whole furore, being quite willing to sit on its hands in these elections. However, that argument cuts both ways. If, fundamentally, they’re still stable and Labour, then they’re probably just as likely to be stable and Labour no matter which direction the policy heads off in.
The best argument which can be deployed against a shift in policy is that history suggests that the Remain revolters, when faced with an election which actually means something serious, like a General Election, will return to the fold, as they have done in the past. Anti-Brexiters can argue, with some justification, that this is different, because in the past Brexit was theoretical, whereas now it’s all too real. So deserters are likely to be stickier with their new parties, unless policy changes. However, the local elections, still less than a month ago, did show that far fewer of our anorak voters will risk their vote on a protest even when what’s at stake is just the local council. So in a general election we can reasonably expect the return of many of last week’s EU defectors.
Which means that I’m afraid the best I can do is to answer one divisive and contentious question, but it doesn’t move us much further on, because I can’t answer the second.
Did this election show Labour losing more votes to Remain parties because of its failure to vigorously oppose Brexit, than it lost to Leave parties because of its failure to vigorously promote Brexit?
Yes, unequivocally, yes. This was a Remainer revolt.
Does this mean that if Labour doesn’t change tack and oppose Brexit vigorously, it will be hammered at the next General Election?
Not necessarily, and be very wary of those who claim certainty in either direction. The EU elections really are a protest vote opportunity without equal, and this was definitely a protest vote. The contrast with the locals cannot be dismissed. We’re still in a position of making a judgment call about whether the numbers of Remainers who might fail to return in the next General Election would be outweighed by the numbers of Leavers who might depart if we more vigorously oppose Brexit.
For what it’s worth, though, I used to think the potential loss of Leavers would outweigh the potential loss of Remainers. I have now reversed that view. But I don’t see any way forward which doesn’t involve the loss of potentially large numbers of either Remainers or Leavers. I simply don’t think the centre can hold, as Yeats said.
There is, however, one shaft of light. The Tories are clearly going to pitch for the entire Farageist vote by electing a hard-Brexit leader and going hell-for-leather for the hardest of hard Brexits. I used to be pretty terrified of this. I’m less worried now.
They simply can’t add that total nationalist/fascist vote to their own. Some of it will return to Labour. A good slice of it will stay with Farage no matter what, now, as the Great Betrayal Myth is too powerful. But most importantly, it looks like the Tory Remainers, or ex-LibDems, or whoever the hell they are, are declaring that they’re not happy at last, and there’s more of them willing to make that known than perhaps anyone previously thought.
While many of them will return to the fold in a meaningful General Election, it’s a reasonable supposition that a Johnson-led Tory Party pitching for Farageists is likely to repel many of those who leant their votes to the LibDems last week, and a LibDem revival in a General Election is far, far more threatening to the Tories than it is to Labour.
The situation might be a range of bad options for Labour, but having looked hard at these figures, I think our bad options are less bad than the Tory bad options. That’s all the comfort I can offer, but it is at least something.
Disappointed Idealist 
A very interesting read. Much to mull over. Thanks. Personally, I my take on what happened has convinced me that if we are to have any claim in future to live in a functioning democracy, we need to reform the electoral process. If the political shambles of the last three years in particular teaches us anything it is that ‘winner-takes-all’ is deeply flawed. I hope that those politicians who claim to want to change the face of politics for good in our country recognise that this needs to begin by introducing proportional representation into all elections.
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I’m an “anorak” Labour voter who voted Green in local elections & EU. I live in a marginal Lab/Tory constituency. My Labour vote counts in GE (though I did vote, to my regret, LibDem in 2010 because our old Lab MP was a crook & the LibDem candidate talked sense). I’m local elections i live in a staunch Tory ward. I vote Green to make a point. In EU elections I voted Green because PR & again, to make a point. I will vote Lab again in GE, because it’s a marginal constituency & I like our current MP. Also a leave constituency with FB users shouting at our MP because he supports a people’s vote.
Ultimately, what I’m saying is that the type of constituency you live in will influence voting. I’ve no idea how you could factor it in but it’s not at all straightforward. Way too many variables.
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You are seeking to confuse the very clear picture that emerges from the EU parliament elections in the UK.
https://www.google.com/search?q=UK+EU+election+results&oq=UK+EU+election+results&aqs=chrome..69i57j0j69i60j0l3.13889j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
The figures can be analysed in many ways but the implications for the disastrous Labour vote are always the same.
1. Leave vs Remain
Stick with the vote share of the Parties with a clear position. This means leaving out Labour and Conservative even though Labour Remain voters in 2016 massively exceeded Leave voters. The position with the Conservatives is less clear but likely to evenly split. So the following analysis is already biased in favour of Leave. Just do the sums.
Total share of Leave Parties (Brexit + UKIP) = 35.3%
Total share of Remain Parties (Lib Dem + Green + SNP + Change UK) = 47.3%
But I haven’t even counted in Plaid or taken account of Northern Ireland where Remain Parties (Sinn Fein + Alliance) massively outvoted the Leave Party (DUP)
2. Leave with No Deal is better than No Brexit vs Remain/Leave with Deal
Here we have to leave out the Conservatives as they contain both positions
Total share of No Deal Parties (Brexit + UKIP) = 35.3
Total share of Remain/Leave with deal Parties (Lib Dem + Green + SNP + Labour) = 61.4
And this analysis also leaves out Plaid and Northern Ireland.
Why is this election and these figures massively important?
First, it has NOTHING to do with the next General Election. This was a SINGLE ISSUE election even though the idiot Corbyn tried to claim that it was not. In 2014 UKIP ‘won’ the EU election with a massive share of the vote, but gained only one MP in the General Election that followed.
Secondly, we are now in the highly dangerous position that Leaving with no deal WILL HAPPEN BY DEFAULT on 31 October unless there is either a General Election or Parliament votes to revoke Article 50.
Labour is powerless to bring about either. Ironically only Conservative MPs can now stop a No Deal Brexit.
This being the case the false arguments about ‘the people vs parliament’ so effectively made by Farage and the Tory ERGs HAS TO BE REFUTED if enough Conservative MPs are to find the courage to bring down their government or vote to Revoke.
Part of the argument relies on the voting shares I have set out. The other part, with serious implications for Labour, is where the hundreds of thousands of Labour votes went. In Remain constituencies they went to the Lib Dems, Greens and the SNP. But in Leave constituencies most of the missing Labour votes also went the same way, with comparatively few going to the Brexit Party, who overwhelmingly got their huge number of votes from former UKIP and Conservative voters.
Most of the Labour Front Bench got the message fairly quickly, but not the idiot Corbyn and his advisers (who really do have to go). This morning he is still going on about ‘a Peoples Vote’ on any deal. May’s deal is dead. It is an ex-deal. Regardless of the fantasies of the Tory leadership contenders, no new deal is possible before 31 October. There is nowhere near enough time. So the bleak alternatives are No Deal or No Brexit.
It is obvious that hundreds of thousands of Labour voters and the vast majority of the leadership of the Labour Party can see that. So to save the country and the Labour Party Corbyn or his successor must (very quickly) make Labour the main NO BREXIT Party and lead all the others in stopping the NO DEAL NUTTERS.
PS On everything except Brexit I Have supported Corbyn.
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I’m not “seeking” to do anything except explore the results to see if I can draw conclusions from them, Roger.
I think possibly you missed those conclusions – my fault for writing this very late last night, so not being as clear as I’d like, perhaps.
The main conclusions are:
1) Labour lost far more Remain votes than Leave votes
2) The Tories are also suffering a major Remain revolt which is getting almost no coverage/consideration
3) None of this should be taken as in any way indicative of what might happen in a GE.
4) There’s now more a more persuasive argument that Labour Remainers are just as, if not more, potentially mobile as Labour Leavers.
5) There’s no harm-free way forward for Labour, but the Tories are, if anything, in a worse state.
On your other issues, and I hope you’ll forgive me for suggesting that this is not your usual coherent and thought-through style, I really disagree with you. Corbyn has come out – again- this morning and said we support a public vote on “any” future deal. Having whipped for it three times, and said this again and again, and also having stuck religiously to the conference decision – as he should – I’m not sure what else he could do. We now have very clear statements saying that “any” deal must be put to another vote, while people shout “why aren’t you clear on supporting another vote”. It’s no longer a rational discussion.
As for your argument that even a new referendum is now unacceptable, and the party should simply cancel Brexit, I would myself be implacably against that if it were our policy. I’ve never accepted the argument that another referendum is undemocratic, because I think any argument that holding a vote is undemocratic is mad. However, it absolutely would be undemocratic, in my view, if we were to adopt a simple cancellation/revocation policy.
Whether we like the result or not – and I hate it – it seems to me to be a very basic tenet of democracy that you cannot invite an entire nation to vote on a topic, receive over thirty million votes, and then just decide that you’re not going to pay any attention to that at all. That really would be anti-democratic.
The ONLY way to prevent or reverse the 2016 Brexit vote must involve another public vote. That can be a new referendum, or it can be a General Election in which the winning party stands on a manifesto of revocation. But it cannot be done without such a national vote. Any party which tried to do that would be acting undemocratically.
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I could make a case for revoking Article 50, if I felt like staying up all night to do it, but as no one is going to do it I see little point in trying.
I wonder if you’re right that the Tories will opt for a hard Brexiteer as leader – but again, speculation would be unproductive: we shall see.
As for the rest – the anorak voters, of whom I am one of course, since show me an election and I shall be scrabbling at the polling station door, do not constitute the bulk of the electorate; but once they’ve done their work, they do exercise an influence – particularly given how ever rogue statistics might be, there is no limit to the ingenuity of the popular press, and the not so popular press come to that, to exploit and distort them.
I should have preferred a far less ambiguous Labour campaign, because it appeared vacillating and feeble and was almost bound to damage our vote in both Leave and Remain areas. Certainty may be the hallmark of the over-confident and self-deluded, but it’s still helpful in elections… neutrality has never struck anyone as dynamism; and Labour’s leadership seemed not to much neutral as afraid to reveal its hand, anyway.
Perhaps what we’re seeing – in this highly unstable political environment, and in this problematic election in particular – is Labour’s less committed support flaking away in these specific circumstances, to return later – but that’s got to be a hope rather than a firm expectation, and I’m not so sure that it necessarily follows unless Labour can regain the dynamism and momentum it has lost.
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“The ONLY way to prevent or reverse the 2016 Brexit vote must involve another public vote. That can be a new referendum, or it can be a General Election in which the winning party stands on a manifesto of revocation. But it cannot be done without such a national vote. Any party which tried to do that would be acting undemocratically.”
I agree with that, but respectfully, you do not seem to have grasped that Labour, even with the support of all the other Remain Parties in parliament, does not have the power to bring about either a General Election or a second referendum. None of the candidates for the the next Prime Minister will countenance either. If Labour tables a ‘No confidence in the government’, or a second referendum motion it will be defeated unless a handful of Conservative MPs vote with Labour. The DUP certainly won’t.
That is how disastrously bad it is. Who is to blame?
1. David Cameron
I am not keen on referenda at all, but certainly not one on a subject that is so complicated that the majority of the population will be unable to understand it. This is because Piaget’s Formal Operational Thinking (Kahneman’s System Two thinking) is only present in a (diminishing) minority of the population. This is the now proven Anti-Flynn effect. This is clear from any number of painful ‘vox pop’ interviews that are broadcast on the TV.
https://rogertitcombelearningmatters.wordpress.com/2018/03/22/cambridge-analytica-daniel-kahneman-the-anti-flynn-effect-and-education/
2. Theresa May
She made her aim of ‘delivering Brexit’ impossible with her March 2018 ‘Mansion House’ speech, which the EU correctly described at the time as ‘fantasy land’. Faced with the fact that what she wanted from the EU would conflict with its major principles, rather than tack towards reality, she adopted the ‘No Deal is better than a bad deal’ mantra that encouraged the ERG nutters. She then deliberately ran down the clock in the hope that by threatening the EU negotiators with No Deal, they would cave in and give her the unique ‘bespoke’ deal she wants. The disastrous result has been her being so ignominiously hoisted by her own petard. She has only herself to blame for her eventual abject humiliation.
3. Jeremy Corbyn
It has been clear from expert analysis from the very start that there is no good Brexit – all versions would be much worse than Remaining in the EU in hundreds of ways, Corbyn misunderstood the evidence and consistently sabotaged the possibility of a powerful anti-Brexit coalition in Parliament. He insisted on the disastrously convoluted policy on a public vote that has thrown away thousands of formerly loyal Labour votes. All this was compounded by his insistence on ‘implementing the outcome of the 2016 referendum’ in which the crucial issues of the NI border and the high possibility of a disastrous No Deal exit were never aired let alone debated.
A good number of Conservative MPs agree with all of this. Corbyn’s job is to persuade them to join the stop Brexit coalition that is now the historic duty of Labour to lead, with or without Jeremy Corbyn.
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I have just read that Alastair Campbell has just been expelled from the Labour Party for voting Lib Dem in the EU elections. This defies belief. Presumably the many hundreds of Labour Party members in London that did the same will also be expelled – London being the only area in London where the Brexit Party was soundly defeated. It is hard to believe that Corbyn hasn’t sanctioned this. WHAT AN IDIOT
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Sorry typo – should be ‘only area in England’
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I don’t have a problem with this. The rules are really clear on this point. Of course members can and do vote however they want in the privacy of a polling booth, but to use a space in the national media to boast of one’s support for another party is either incredible arrogance that the rules will not be applied to oneself, or a loss of self-control so dramatic that we are perhaps better off without such a member.
Your complaint about Corbyn is over Brexit. I am less damning over that. My complaint about Corbyn is that he has allowed a free-for-all to develop amongst the more irreconcilable wreckers on the right of the party who have absolutely refused to accept the legitimacy of the 2015 result, the 2016 result, or indeed the legitimacy of the membership at all. As a consequence, some MPs and high-profile figures have spent the last four years causing incredible harm, demoralization and divisiveness.
I don’t think it is an unfair question to ask whether we would have had the same result in 2017 if those wreckers had actually campaigned for Labour, rather than spending every day offering a hostile media the “internal source” criticism it used to try and suppress the Labour vote.
That’s Corbyn’s fault. He refused again and again to take action against the wreckers in line with the party’s rules and disciplinary proceedings. When the membership offered assistance by calling for easier reselection, Corbyn fudged the issue in favour of protecting those who want nothing but the obstruction -and destruction- of everything the membership has been trying to achieve since 2015. When Streeting pops up with yet another attack on “Trotskyite” members, or Hodge insists there is a massive and unique problem of antisemitism amongst Labour members, or Watson deliberately engineers yet more bad press during any and every election campaign, that’s Corbyn’s fault. That’s by far, in my view, his biggest failure of leadership, and there isn’t a problem the Labour Party faces which hasn’t been amplified by that failure.
So I’ll not be shedding any tears over Campbell, who knew exactly what he was doing when he went public as he did. He expected to be able to have another free hit and walk away unscathed. I’m frankly delighted that this particular wrecker is now out of the tent. He might still be pissing in, as he has been these last four years, but at least he’s now having to do it from further
away.
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I agree with you in general about right wing wreckers, but I don’t see that description as applying to Alastair Campbell. Like all of us he has the right to his own opinions about the fitness of Jeremy Corbyn as leader, I have never seen him criticising the leadership on the public media despite being invited to do so by interviewers. This is especially true of Channel 4 News where he often appears. The interviewer never fails to try to get him to criticise Jeremy Corbyn and he never does.
“So I’ll not be shedding any tears over Campbell, who knew exactly what he was doing when he went public as he did. He expected to be able to have another free hit and walk away unscathed.”
If course he knew exactly what he was doing. He was advising Labour members to vote Lib Dem – and a good thing too, otherwise the Brexit Party would have topped the poll in London as well as in the rest of the UK except in Scotland where hundreds of Labour members voted for the SNP – resulting in the only other major defeat of Farage. Yes, he did use the media to have a ‘free hit’ – against Farage and it was highly effective.
I have always supported Compass, which advocates tactical voting to keep out Conservatives. Zac Goldsmith in the Richmond Park by-election is a good example. Should members of the Labour Party have been expelled for advocating voting Lib Dem there so getting rid of the former Mayor of London candidate? Plenty of local Members certainly did.
Surely the rules for expelling Members should the same for everybody, not abused to settle scores.
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[…] Notes From The Cult: After EU. No, After EU from a blog called disappointed idealist, a different take on what happened and what should happen next. He or she starts by looking at who didn’t vote. […]
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According to the Guardian, Labour members overwhelmingly agree with me,
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/28/labour-party-pushed-to-ballot-members-on-second-eu-referendum
“Party members are increasingly concerned that Labour’s chances of winning the next general election could be harmed if we fail to commit clearly to a public vote on Brexit, and to campaign for remain in that referendum.
“Polling over the last year has been clear that over 80% of members, and over 70% of Labour voters, want a second referendum and to remain. Party conference, where policy is normally set, is still four months away, only a month before the end of the article 50 extension. It’s essential that we clarify our position as a party much more quickly.”
Mike Buckley, the director of the Labour For A People’s Vote campaign, said the group had already received thousands of signatures from Labour members calling for a special conference or members’ ballot, to be held before the end of June.
I have always been a strong supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, but he seems to have ‘lost it’. His recent appearances on TV have been truly dire..
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Corbyn’s TV appearances have always been dire, IMO. I have no doubt the majority of Labour members are deeply hostile to Brexit. I chair a CLP, so it’s hardly a secret! The question has never been about that. The question has always been about Labour voters, not members, and there the picture is far less one-sided.
The entire Labour policy has essentially been based around whether the 30-40% of Labour voters who chose Leave are more likely to desert than the 60-70% who voted Remain.
Until these elections, I thought the evidence was that the Leavers were more at risk of departure. After this election, I’m reversing that view.
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You are right to reverse your view. The evidence from the change in share of the vote since 2014 is absolutely conclusive..
The Brexit Party increase in share came almost exclusively from UKIP and the Conservatives. The Lib Dem and Green increase in share came mainly from Labour but also some from Conservatives Remainers, of whom there are far more than the current candidates for PM seem willing to recognise. It is important that Labour makes its position on Brexit clear before the Peterborough bi-election, because Brexit will still be the number one issue for voters, as it was in the local elections.
Labour needs Lib Dem and Green votes. Neither of these Parties discourage tactical voting, but Labour will not get their votes unless it comes out clearly for a People’s vote with the recommendation to Remain.
If Labour does not win this bi-election then Corbyn really does have to consider his position.
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