Labour’s election defeat: not just about Brexit
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Alexandra Hill explores the reasons for Labour’s defeat in December.
The first Christmas election in nearly 100 years proved to be remarkable in far more ways than anyone could have thought. The whole political map of Britain was dismantled and rewritten, with Boris Johnson’s Conservatives successfully infiltrating the traditional Labour heartlands, in many cases overturning previously substantial Labour majorities.
The scope of these swings to the Conservatives cannot easily be exaggerated, nor the political significance of them undermined. A mere few years ago in 2017, the contemplation of voting Tory in these historic mining towns would be an unthinkable offence. Even two years later, first-time Tory voters in what were Labour safe seats explained that their parents would be “turning in their graves” if they had known that their children had voted for Thatcher’s party.
In his diagnosis of events, John McDonnell, Jeremy Corbyn’s right-hand man, said that “it was Brexit that did us”, while also blaming media hostility towards Corbyn and the near daily hammering he received from the dominant right-wing Murdoch press. In his analysis, McDonnell appears to reject that there were any other deeply rooted causes of what was Labour’s worst election result since 1935.
Undoubtedly, Labour’s Brexit policy, while perhaps appealing to the Remain-voting urban middle class, was wholeheartedly rejected by many traditional Labour leave-voting constituencies, who could – perhaps understandably – conceive the renegotiation and second referendum policy as betraying the result of the 2016 referendum. Further insult was added to injury when more and more of the Labour front-bench conceded that they would advocate for Remain in a second referendum.
The misalignment of Labour’s Brexit policy with the views of the traditional Labour-voting, leave-supporting constituencies indisputably provided a captive audience for Boris’s unambiguous “Get Brexit Done” agenda (although the accuracy of such a slogan is indeed questionable). This clear, uncompromising Brexit policy coupled with Boris’s decisive break away from austerity policy, with manifesto commitments such as 50,000 more nurses by 2024, made the notion of voting Tory a far more feasible option for this demographic.
The daily hounding and negative coverage of the Labour Party and, most notably, Corbyn is clear from a mere glance at the leading tabloids and is substantiated by research conducted by Loughborough University, which found that coverage of the Labour party was overwhelmingly negative.
However, Labour must accept that Brexit is just one reason for their election catastrophe. This is clear from post-election polling by YouGov, which found that “Corbyn and his leadership” was cited above Brexit by voters who abandoned Labour in the election. Equally, the media blame-game is not constructive and diverts attention away from the issues that can be more readily addressed – the right-wing bias of the bulk of print media is an unfortunate reality in Britain and is an inevitable contention for a left-wing political leader, as unfair as it may seem. However, the left can take some consolation in the growth of new independent online news outlets as well as the political distribution channels enabled by social media.
But perhaps the hardest pill for the Corbynist faction of the Labour Party to swallow will be the culpability of Corbyn himself. The election started on dire turf with regards to the leader’s popularity: he entered the election with the lowest satisfaction ratings of any Labour leader since the 1970s. While Corbyn did appear to have some redeeming features in his polling, such as his “relatability” and “trustworthiness”, when it came to categories relating to leadership or his suitability for office, the polling published throughout the election campaign made for similarly dismal reading.
Tony Blair, the most electorally successful Labour Prime Minister, described Corbyn as personifying “a brand of quasi-revolutionary socialism” that would “never” appeal to Labour voters. Indeed, their manifesto of copious, dubiously costed spending commitments, far exceeding the size of those offered by the Tories, did seem unrealistic to many traditional Labour voters who saw beyond the face-value appeal of some of the giveaways. I think that for a great number of both traditional and swing voters, Corbyn’s agenda seemed a regressive socialist policy regime, returning to the disorder of the 1970s rather than a realistic forward-looking set of manifesto commitments. This significant scepticism surrounding the feasibility of the spending commitments was ultimately persistent, even with the backing of 163 left-leaning economists.
Many MPs have also brought attention to the antisemitism that has plagued the Labour Party under Corbyn’s leadership and the great damage it has done to Labour’s reputation. While no political party is immune from issues of racism - with accusations of Islamophobia among the Conservatives being made by high-profile figures like Baroness Warsi - Corbyn has been, even according to members of the Labour Party, highly ineffective in eradicating the issue of antisemitism. The Labour Party, under Corbyn, is the first political party, with the exception of the BNP, to be investigated by the Equality and Human Rights Commission over racism. Ruth Smeeth, a former Labour MP and Jewish woman said that Corbyn had been “at best a bystander” to antisemitism but at “worst culpable and directly involved”. Smeeth’s allegations are sadly typical of what has been said by many other voices in the Jewish community – from individuals like defector Luciana Berger to the 178-year old The Jewish Chronicle.
Corbyn’s fitness for office has been repeatedly brought into question, even before this momentous defeat. Ian Austin, the former MP for Dudley, was particularly scathing, alerting voters to Corbyn’s affiliation with suspected IRA terrorists in the aftermath of the Brighton Bombing incident and in his description of Hamas and Hezbollah as being his “friends”. Corbyn’s past affiliation also did not go unnoticed among members of the secret service, with Sir Richard Dearlove, former MI6 chief, describing the prospect of Corbyn being Prime Minister as being a “present danger to our country”.
Labour’s election post-mortem is now clearly underway and the scope and causes of their defeat will likely dominate the upcoming leadership election. The party must, however, for the sake of its future, look at the deeper causes of their defeat, beyond just Brexit and the Murdoch Press.
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