Labour's Problem

[kainosite]

Scanning through the usual pundits I haven't seen anyone coherently articulate Labour's current electoral problem. I have seen a lot of myopic comments from all factions of the party saying "If only we'd done what I wanted, we would have won!" But no one seems to have put it all together, so I thought I'd better have a go.

Comments

[grapefruitzzz]

One thing I've noticed is Labour's oversimplification of their various voter bases. The people who vote Labour in northern cities are more like London Labour voters than those in failed seaside towns and parts of Wales. It didn't endear me to David Lammy to hear how he couldn't run for leader as he didn't understand 'the North', whle sitting in an urban Labour seat much like my own.

(this could form the basis of my on-going self-query "Why, despite being rabidly ABTory, does the Labour Party really annoy me?". They assume too many voters without speaking to them. The Tories do that too, which is why they lost some votes to UKIP. But they lost far fewer because Tories are conservative and feel quite free to blame The Other Out There for poverty).

Also, they need to be callous and vulgar and pick a charismatic leader, never mind the sub-politics, that can always be finessed, but Tony Blair's podium speeches helped Labour and Paddy Ashdown rebult the Lib Dems. And (sigh) the minute I saw Cameron, I knew it was trouble.

I'm old enough to remember the cold, horrible dawn of 1992 and the seemingly endless reliance on banking again. Some more. But betting on margin/selling people unaffordable houses/taxing people with no momey has failed every time greedy fools have tried it and maybe the lesson will stick after it failing twice in ten years. The poll tax was defeated by direct action rather than a new government. People could vote 'no' to the EU just to defeat the government.

Man, that's a random collection of points. I'd been saving them from being politely neutral. You're right, though, about Labour needing to come up with a solution for the terrible work situation. If they can capture all the crap-and-no-job people and all the private-tenant people and all the people who have other forms of insecurity, then they'll get somewhere.

[kainosite]

Man, that's a random collection of points. I'd been saving them from being politely neutral.

Well, you know, you free to tell me I'm full of crap, too. I don't mind an argument. XD

You're right about the Northern cities being more like London than Grimsby or the pit villages. You can actually see this in the 2015 election result: Labour's vote share went up by about 10% in places like Manchester and Liverpool too, except it was even more useless there than in London because there were fewer Tory and Lib Dem seats to win. And the Ukip voting levels reflect it too: diverse urban populations who are on average younger and better educated -> low Ukip vote.

(I suspect the differences will become even more pronounced if Osborne proceeds with the devolution/Northern Powerhouses scheme, as the big cities with functioning economies whizz ahead and the small cities and towns get completely left behind and starved of local government funding because they lack a local corporate tax base to raise it. This is what we have here in the US where schools are funded by local government: the schools in the poor district down the road from me only open 4 days a week a lot of the time because they haven't got money to pay teachers for all 5 days. Localism is hell.)

But Labour's problem is that most of London and Birmingham + virtually all of Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds is not enough to put together a Labour majority. Even if you added in Glasgow and Edinburgh it wouldn't be enough. I think to have any realistic prospect of government they need two out of the suburban Midlands "Middle England" seats, Scotland, or the white working class in the rust belt. Without an electoral coalition including two of those groups, they just don't have the numbers and everyone, urban or rust belt or Scottish, gets stuck with the Tories.

And the thing about the private tenants and the crap-or-no-job blocks is they're not organized enough to vote. The unionized working class could be turned out; now the people who really need a non-Tory government are too fragmented, and part of that is Labour not offering any serious reform to rally people but a big part of Labour's feebleness is that the working class vote is now too small to win elections for them so they have to win over a bunch of middle class voters too.

The whole labor movement needs an overhaul to make it fit for purpose in the modern era, frankly. Labour's malaise is really just a symptom of the weakness of the movement.