Should Labour move right or left?

[TJC1]

Or more who didn't vote for anyone else.

 

Perhaps they weren't dissatisfied but they had a hot date to go to on election night.

 

The 76% that didn't vote tory.

[gomgeg]

2005 Labour 35.2 per cent of vote. 355seats

2015 Tories. 36.9 per cent of vote. 331seats

So there clearly is something wrong with our voting system, but who it ends up favouring would seem to be something of a lottery.

[TJC1]

Voted tory simply for business reasons and because labour didn't have a credible opposition.

It wouldn't have made a difference either way tbh, the system is flawed.

[Eric Arthur]

Would a system where Labour wins with a smaller number of votes be a flawed system in your opinion

[TJC1]

Would a system where Labour wins with a smaller number of votes be a flawed system in your opinion

 

i think so.

I think for a lot politics holds no interest.

thats why corbyn is a welcome candidate.

[WiseOwl182]

The 76% that didn't vote tory.

 

Sore losers. Anyway, it was 64% that didn't vote Tory (less than the amount who didn't vote for any other party, so they win in the topsy turvy way too). You can't count non-voters as if they felt strongly enough to be bothered who won, they'd have voted.

 

---------- Post added 19-08-2015 at 19:59 ----------

 

you come accross as a liar on both counts. you only seem to have started posting in bulk during the school holidays. now it's non stop. did all your mates clear off to ibiza and not invite you.

 

Maybe a teacher, who spends all 13 weeks holiday a year "marking".

 

---------- Post added 19-08-2015 at 20:06 ----------

 

Have you any idea how insulting, heartless and hurtful that comment is to the many people who are homeless, hungry, or in distress because of the recession?

 

Behind perhaps every one of the unemployment statistics lies a person suffering loss; possibly redundancy and certainly difficulties. Don't tell them there's been no austerity, they're living it every day. And it's getting harder all the time.

 

You're confusing "recession" and "austerity".

 

"Recession" is when people lose jobs and the economy shrinks. It's what Labour oversaw in 2008-10.

 

"Austerity" is when the government makes large cuts to public spending. It's like what Greece is enduring.

 

Then there's the left wing, modern, British definition of "austerity" which people like your good self espouse. It means public spending still growing overall, employment growing, economy growing, but some people on benefits having to either work or cut down on the booze.

Edited August 19, 2015 by WiseOwl182

[drummonds]

Sore losers. Anyway, it was 64% that didn't vote Tory (less than the amount who didn't vote for any other party, so they win in the topsy turvy way too). You can't count non-voters as if they felt strongly enough to be bothered who won, they'd have voted.

 

the guardian put it very well.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/18/labour-party-voters-desertion-election

 

Labour’s lost voters may never return again, study finds

 

Focus group interviews in five key constituencies reveal rejection of Ed Miliband and distrust over the economy, taxation, welfare, union links and immigration

 

Labour may never win back its former supporters who jumped ship to the Conservatives on 7 May and robbed it of any chance of victory, according to the most detailed investigation into why people deserted the party at the election.

 

This is one of many devastating conclusions reached by two former Labour election directors who have conducted a series of focus-group interviews with previously firm Labour backers, all of whom voted Labour in 2010 but switched to the Tories this year.

 

The risk for Labour is permanent irrelevance

 

In a report summarising their findings from five key marginal seats, Alan Barnard and John Braggins say disillusion with Labour among such voters is now so profound and deep-seated that it is unclear whether Labour will even be a relevant force at the next election.

 

“These voters are a hair’s breadth from becoming Conservatives,” says the report, which is being sent to all four Labour leadership candidates. “Labour is now at risk of becoming irrelevant even to voters who have been lifelong supporters.” It adds: “As things stand many of these voters are for the Tories to lose at the next election.”

 

Analysis of the election result has shown that, although Labour gained support as people deserted the Lib Dems, it also lost a large number to other parties. Of all those who voted, 6% were people who had voted Labour in 2010 but who chose other parties. Of these, a third (2%) went straight to the Tories.

 

Barnard and Braggins, who now run a company, BBM Campaigns, which conducts political and business campaigns, held 90-minute focus group sessions in May and June with separate groups of men and women chosen because of their previous loyalty to Labour. In all five seats – Halesowen and Rowley Regis, Croydon Central, Southampton Itchen, Watford and Pudsey – the Tories won, as the surges in support Labour had anticipated failed to materialise. The focus groups gave savage assessments of Labour, which they said lacked economic credibility, and Ed Miliband, who they saw as unfit to lead the country – so much so they believed he had permanently damaged the party’s brand.

 

“These voters didn’t see Ed Miliband as a prime minister. In fact, many people in the groups laughed at the prospect of him being leader of the UK.”

 

The report, Listening to Labour’s Lost Voters, adds: “Suffice to say that the brand of Labour has been damaged massively by these voters’ inability to perceive him as a capable and competent prime minister. Their image of Labour as a political party with a leader that was open to derision clouded all their thinking about a renewed Labour party and what Labour needs from its next leader. These voters really struggled to imagine a Labour party with a strong, confident leader in the future.”

 

Former Labour home secretary Jacqui Smith said: “The research suggests a crisis for the party more fundamental than the last time we lost an election we expected to win, in 1992. It suggests changes of an even greater scale are needed than those which turned Labour into election-winning New Labour.” She added: “Voters questioned not just our policies, but more fundamentally what Labour is for and whether we can ever have a credible leader again.”

 

The interviewees, all of whom were in work and were aged 30-65, believed that Labour had left the economy in a mess and that the Tories had gone some way towards putting it right. Even those who believed the 2008 economic crash was not the fault of the Labour government blamed Labour for spending and borrowing too much. One focus group agreed unanimously they would not vote Labour again until the party had been returned to government and had shown it could run the economy responsibly.

 

These people would not themselves switch back to Labour but would wait until others voted them in, and until they had earned back respect. This means election 2025 will be the earliest they would consider voting Labour again.

 

Most believed Labour did not offer the average family the prospect of a better life. Instead, it wanted to tax people who had done well and made themselves wealthy through hard work, so that it could help the worst off and those on welfare, ignoring those in the middle. It was also seen as anti-business, in the pocket of the unions and not tough enough on immigration. “Immigration is the topic that, left to their own devices, the respondents would have talked about all night. Their central arguments, across all groups and repeated frequently, were along the lines that our country is full, our country is broke and public services are creaking and cannot stand extra strain.”

Edited August 20, 2015 by drummonds

[mort]

You can either remain civil and cease with the bickering and name calling or I can issue suspensions. Your choice.

[Guest]

Labour almost certainly will not win the next general election. To wrestle back Scotland from the SNP while simultaneously defeating the Tories in England would be nothing short of a political miracle.

 

Labour should focus mainly on just getting Scotland back from the SNP before they even contemplate getting into Downing Street.

[Obelix]

Labour under millibandlost the election, fine. But he's not the leader anymore. SO irrelevant. History.

 

It should be but it's not irrelevant. People still bang on about Blair. They even bang on about Thatcher and unless she's got telekinesis from the grave she wont affect matters any more (and I'm sure people will post things like "I wouldn't put that past the old witch" - proving the point nicely..)

 

Milliband seriously damaged the credibility of Labour, in the same way that Foot did. It took fifteen years from Foot before they got back into power. Memories last long, despite them in theory being quite irrelevant.