Have Labour learned anything?

Cameron gained seats in 15. Thatcher gained seats in 1983.
Blair after 1 term lost 2,793,214 votes.

Thatcher after 2 terms gained 748,267 votes in 1987.
In 1992 Major got 14,093,007 votes, even Blair didn't get that many, ever!
With Blair the decline started rapidly but he didn't acknowledge it.

It's dogged Labour to this day.

Well I am no longer a Labour supporter but was for a time a member of the party and saw how it operated on the inside. They have been taken over by middle class control freaks more interested in fighting factional internal wars in order to obtain absolute dominance for one point of view only. They are obsessed with identity politics issues, aka woke issues, but hold the masses of the working class in contempt, seeing them all as ill-educated racists and phobes of one kind or another. This, from the party formed to represent the working classes. Instead many of them now see themselves as a party of the middle class and for the middle class. But the problem is there are not enough woke middle class liberals to deliver a Labour majority. The party's increasing disconnect from working class voters is resulting in it losing its former working class base, without whose support winning elections has proven difficult. The working classes were thus there for the taking by others and the populist right won many of them over. Many of these voted for Brexit both as a cry of anguish against an establishment that ignored them and because the populist right was at least addressing their concerns and had won many of them around to supporting Brexit partly because of that. The collapse in the red wall seats had been building for a long time and finally broke the dam in 2019. Labour should have learned from what happened in Scotland much earlier, when working class Scots started deserting them in growing numbers to head for the SNP. I can from my own experience confirm that working class party members who were there to address working class concerns were dismissed internally as dangerous radicals for wanting to do something about private rents for example. The middle class party members though were more likely to be the landlords than the tenants.

Internally, true idealists who stand up for what they believe in rather than toe the party line are regarded with the utmost suspicion, and the party rules were blatantly and constantly used as weapons against those not wholly on message with the correct faction. Whether members got disciplined or expelled or not depended far less on what they had said or done and far more on whether or not they were part of the right faction or not. One local councillor assaulted a local activist but nothing was done about it because he was part of the desired clique. Those who were not were constantly having their social media posts trawled for anything that could be weaponised against them. All it took was a single comment of support for the Palestinians taken out of context, or an admission that you once supported a party other than Labour, or even liking something said by someone who is a political opponent. Typically before internal party elections those not of the correct faction who were intending to stand would suddenly have often wholly false accusations of antisemitism or something levelled against them, which automatically barred them from standing. By the time they were cleared the elections would be over. In this way internal gerrymandering involving fake allegations were deployed against non-centrists. And anyone not of the right faction were frequently called to account for something they might have said on facebook three years earlier which was quoted out of context. We began to feel that we were in some kind of authoritarian structure and had to be careful what we said to friends on social media because of an awareness that "they" were always watching.

In short the party proved to be an environment where careerist apparatchiks prepared to go along with anything could thrive as long as they obeyed orders, whilst idealists and those who genuinely believed in something found the party to be a hostile environment. This got much worse when Starmer took over, and most of us rather quickly gave them and him the two fingered salute.

All this impacts Labour's electoral performance in various ways. The people, including the working classes they hold in such obvious contempt, are not the idiots they take them for. That Labour is a party of unprincipled careerists believing in little but power for its own sake and prepared to say any truth, half truth or lie that serves their purpose, anything but upset the wealthy elites who secretly back them of course, has become much more widely known, even amongst many who were once Labour supporters. This awareness that Labour doesnt believe in much anymore except power for its own sake is another factor why many are reluctant to support it, and is a factor in its poor electoral performance.

As for Corbyn, I was a member of the party when he was leader. Some left leaning members idolized him precisely because he was a man of principle and in this sense was seen as the antidote to a bunch of self-interested Blairite careerists. The latter of course hated him for his idealism. They hold idealists in contempt and mistrust, because they tend to be more loyal to their consciences than to the party line. But those on the left who idolized Corbyn overlooked his many faults. These included a too easy going nature and lack of sufficient toughness, a tendency to be too stubborn and inflexible on issues he cared about whilst having a lack of personal conviction on issues he did not feel strongly about. These latter included the Brexit issue where he showed a consequent tendency to go along the last person to speak to him. Starmer was allowed to dominate Labour's policy in this area, the outcome of which itself contributed to the scale of Labour's defeat in 2019. Starmer therefore did as much to lose that election for Labour as Corbyn did. Of course, another big problem with Corbyn its that he had so much baggage that a hostile media could use against him. I know I experienced on the door step constant hostility to Corbyn from older working class tabloid readers, who were being told constantly about Corbyns past conduct in regards to talking to Sinn Fein or supporting the Palestinians. It was all too easy for this to be portrayed as being friendly to terrorists. Corbyn himself also made errors in parliament that didnt play well for him, notably over his reluctance to condemn Russia without an investigation first over the Skripal poisonings. Asking for an enquiry was not unreasonable but he should have at least gone along with the condemnation of Russia until or unless any investigation found otherwise. Aware of how we'd all been lied to over Iraq, he saw the possibility that we were being lied to in a similar way over this. We were not. He made the wrong call which played into the arms of those portraying him as a friend of terrorists and despots.

So yes, Corbyn himself was a factor in Labours defeat due to his unpopularity amongst older tabloid reading voters in large part, with his own faults and errors weaponised against him. It is worth noting that amongst working age voters, Labour got more votes than the Tories in 2019 in spite of Brexit and in spite of Corbyn. But it was the mass rejection of Corbyn personally as well as their rejection of Starmer's second referendum policy, by older voters that proved so electorally disastrous for Labour then.

It should also be stated that the loss of the 2010 and 2015 elections predated Corbyn. Brown partly suffered from the fact that Labour had already been in power for 13 years and, lurching ever further to the right to head off the appeal of the Tories, was seriously losing it's radical base, many of whom were switching to other parties. Brown tried to be too clever by half and screwed it up, first winning approval on the left by increasing the top rate to 50p, then rapidly squandering it by the own goal of inviting Thatcher to Downing St, which was a kick in the teeth for the left without being seen as anything more than a gimmick by the right. His decision to abolish the 10p rate to finance a cut in the basic rate was seen as robbing the poor to pay for a middle class tax cut. And in the campaign itself his Gillian Duffy moment seemed to show, in light of all the rest I have just mentioned, his contempt for working class people.

Miliband tried to be more progressive, genuinely wanting a fairer deal for tenants for example. But he was hidebound by the Blairites who kept forcing him to take two steps back after taking three forward. So he was unpersuasive due to his resulting lack of apparent consistency. He'd make radical noises then row back in practice. He thus failed to convince those wanting radical change that he could deliver it whilst still managing to scare those who didnt want radical change with his apparent radicalism. His geeky image was also effectively used against him amongst less thoughtful voters. The fact that Lib Dem support in Scotland collapsed as a result of the coalition and that these voters went not to Labour but the SNP, gave the latter enough votes to cross a tipping point and wipe out Labour in Scotland. Labour's weakness there was a big factor in the 2015 defeat as well as in every subsequent election.

Are you racist?

Are you even human wonky?

Vinny is turning woke though. Learned is American for the British word learnt.

Woke can transform you without you being aware, one small step at a time.

The 2019 general election

(1) Brexit

(2) Jeremy Corbyn

On Brexit of course, the Conservatives under Boris were the only party determined to "get Brexit done" at any cost, the other three main parties were either oppossed to Brexit, or in the case of Labour, seemed indifferent to it, in so much as they certainly opposed Brexit at any cost.

The Brexit Party had zero chance of coming to power, and so 90% of Brexit voters voted Conservative, including in traditional Labour areas, whereas the pro Europe voters were split between Labour, the Lib Dems, SNP.

It was a complicated general election frustrated by one main issue, plus a leader of the Labour Party who was just too Left wing for many people.