Whilst I agree they need to pick a side, I don't think you're right that going left ( ) is what they need. The swings so far in these elections in England have been largely from Lab to Con. Why are working class voters switching to the Cons? That alone should be the focus of the party's attentions.ZedLeg wrote: ↑Fri May 07, 2021 10:00 amNot sure about down south but a lot of the scottish left moved to the Greens and SNP years ago, now a lot of people I know are leaving the SNP for the greens too.
Corbyn did good work bringing a lot of left wing voters back towards the labour party. I thought about voting for them.
Labour can't appeal to a socialist base and centre right floating voters, they need to pick a side.
I think what we're seeing is the effects of a wholesale reformation of politics in the UK, England in particular. Many traditional Lab and Con voters switching allegiances. I'm sure a lot of that is down to complacency on the parts of the big two, for relying too much on their safe seats in the past and leaving those seats feeling taken advantage of. That was certainly the case a couple of years ago in the likes of many Liverpool wards for example - no campaigning because of the belief they only needed to focus on the swing areas. Cue traditional voters feeling abandoned.
This all pre-dates the Brexit vote, and had been rumbling for a while, but the referendum gave people their first opportunity to really show their displeasure, and it's snowballed from there. Corbyn ruined Labour as he made them unappealing to the traditional working class Labour voter as they moved hard left, and in particular because he didn't pick a side on Brexit. And that was entirely because the hard left socialists put him in power - they were Remain along with a lot of the middle-class liberals that it appealed to, whilst crucially the traditional voters were Leave. That drove voters to other parties (Brexit Party and Tories) and in these elections more of those votes are being converted to blue. I wonder whether they're also now losing some of the liberal vote back to the Lib Dems as they seem to be making some gains as well.
They need to figure out what they want to be. And I don't think Burnham would achieve that. He might, possibly, have a little more about him as a leader, but I don't think he's enough of a visionary and leader to get people behind him that the party needs. I think he'd spend too much time pointing his finger at the Tories and saying how nasty they are, which clearly isn't washing with voters.