How did a party created to represent the working-class manage to lose so many working-class voters in its GeneralElection heartland to an Old Etonian member of the metropolitan elite?
THE CONSERVATIVE Party did everything it could to hand an election victory to Labour. It gestated Brexit in its womb and then failed to deliver it. It presided over ten years of austerity that strained public services to breaking point. It promoted fanatics while expelling first-raters. Yet Labour has managed its fourth loss in a row and its second under Jeremy Corbyn, and not just any old loss. The exit poll suggests that Labour is on to win just 191 seats, its worst performance since 1935.
Not in Britain’s looking-glass politics. Mr Corbyn may resign swiftly given the scale of his defeat. Mr McDonnell may hang on for longer in order to preside over the transition—a strategy backed by Len McCluskey, the boss of the Unite trade union—but his time in politics is coming to an end. Yet Corbynism is probably here to stay for some time to come. Potential successors will blame the messenger rather than the message. Blairism will remain in the grave.
In any case, the party as a whole has little desire to return to the centre. Mr McDonnell responded to the exit poll by saying that this was a Brexit election but that Labour’s policies went down well on the doorstep. There is more than a grain of truth in this. The British Election Study shows that most voters take “left-wing” positions on questions such as whether society is rigged in favour of the rich. Britain’s one centrist party, the Liberal Democrats, had an even worse night than Labour.
The combination of institutional power and ideological fashion means that the Labour Party is a killing field for moderate leadership candidates. Liz Kendal, who ran in 2015, was humiliated; Tristram Hunt decamped to run the Victoria and Albert Museum; Andy Burnham became mayor of Greater Manchester; and Chuka Umunna left to set up a new party. Tom Watson’s decision to give up both his job as deputy leader and his parliamentary seat to become a fitness instructor was born of despair.
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