Richard Frost wrote: ↑Wed Jan 12 2022 1:48pm
Despite his growing popularity Kier Starmer will have an uphill struggle to lead Labour to a victory. The population mood has changed. With the loss of our industrial past many people aspire to different aspirations and are leaving their roots. Whilst being proud of their heritage they see themselves as very different from their past. The growing popularity so far is on the back of Boris Johnsons abysmal performance not on the popularity of Labours policies. Keir has a lot to do still if he is going to win the next election and Labour become the leading party.
If the rumours are true that Corbyn is to create his own party it will depend whether it is local in order for him to keep his seat or national as to whether it affects Labours chances. But Corbyn is a force to be reckoned with and should not be underestimated.
Something I find strange and hard to understand, is when people go to extremes IE: Vote Labour for one election and then parties Like Reform at another. How do peoples opinions change so radically?
The Tory party have done a good job of making Labour look unelectable - and were fortunate that events helped them erase a centre-left Labour party as a possible choice. The Liberal party imploded due to their desperate grab for power in the coalition - and people have not forgotten that they seemed to be a rubber-stamp for Tory policies during that time - or that they betrayed their own voters. Labour has managed to beat itself up too, as if the Tories needed help, with the old left/right wars fuelled by self-loathing for the New Labour years (despite the many positives) and a swing to the left that saw the "broad church" dragged further to the left by the influx of radical socialists that Labour had fought to exclude for decades.
Labour has lost its self-belief and the realization that to actually get anything done you have to appeal to the electorate, not just the membership. Starmer seems capable, if uncharismatic, but his opponents within the party need little help from the UK press to shackle him - and the overriding fear of controversy has Labour on the back foot. They are so scared of upsetting anyone that they manage to please no-one. From my perspective, even if a cetre-left Labour are characterised as Tory-lite, it is the direction of travel that counts - and there were more progressive policies during the last period of Labour government than there have been since. The issue with Corbyn was that he has spent his entire political life as an outlier and found himself surrounded by others who were also not only out of sync witn "New Labour", but also with previous Labour governments. Regardless in the "growth in membership", Corbyn did not see a growth in popularity amongst the electorate (for many reasons). So I don't actually see a Corbyn-led alternate to Labour as being a threat, other than further fracturing the anti-Tory vote.
As for the electorate..... they seem more interested in social media than politics. The last decades have seen a rise in a self-centred, selfish public, whho are happy to lose a bit of real freedom in order to have an easy life (as Facebook know well) and who don't have the attention span to hold any government to account over its 5-year lifespan, let alone over longer. This is where the establishment have been really successful - they have defused the spirit of rebellion that scared them sh*tless at the end of the C20th, they have replaced social justice with the environment as the cause for concern and bred a generation of voters who both believe the lies they are told and don't believe the truth at the same time. They have convinced them that they are the clever ones and anyone who disagrees is wrong - and more, they are to be abused, othered and attacked at any and every opportunity. That's where we are, lucky us.
The one fact to keep in mind is that the rich just keep getting richer, so their strategy is working, isn't it!