Ten Delusions on Labour's defeat

On 8th May Ian Leslie predicted in the New Statesman here that the following ten delusional explanations for Labour's defeat would be produced as the party tried to understand what had hit it.

 1)  The media did it
 2)  The establishment stitched it up
 3)  Clever Tories
 4)  Voters are stupid and venal
 5)  The SNP stole our victory
 6)  Labour wasn't left-wing enough
 7)  Tony Blair
 8)  Politics is too superficial
 9)  Ed was the wrong messenger
10) Anti-Politics

Well, I've spotted every one of those being produced during Labour's current leadership election so he certainly wins points for that prediction.

The one serious hole in his argument that these were all delusions is that he defined the "Clever Tories" argument as follows:

"the Tories" ... "pinned the blame for austerity on Labour and Labour allowed it to stick."

Actually Ian, although I accept that this may indicate stupidity on Labour's part rather than political genius on the part of the Conservatives, if you don't recognise that there is quite a lot of truth in that statement it is you that's on the wrong planet.

But his other nine points are pretty much dead on.

And here's the interesting thing. Switch round Tory and Labour, left/right wing and Blair/Miliband for appropriate Tory scapegoat (Thatcher/Major/Hague/IDS) and these were pretty much the identical excuses which Conservatives used to try to explain away defeat from 1997 to 2005.

It was only when we got so fed up with losing that we realised that we had to pick a leader and candidates who would try to address the things that voters were actually worried about, not the things we thought they should be worried about, that it became possible for the Conservatives to have a serious chance of winning again.

And here is an even more important conclusion. The Conservatives won a majority in 2015 not because we were brilliant, not because we were loved, not because we got everything right, but because our opponents got too many things catastrophically wrong.

The people who believe Ian Leslie's excuses (except for number 3) still are. But we can't assume that Labour incompetence will win us the 2020 election. We have to fight the 2020 election on the situation which exists then: we have to listen hard to the people and we have to address their concerns. No party will stay in power for more than one or two elections because their opponents are useless and nobody can afford to be complacent about their electoral support.

Comments

Jim said…
I think the referendum results will have a huge effect in 2020. As things are looking at the moment, there is going to be a treaty change, most likely in the form of a new treaty. This, however, is not going to be before 2017.

So the 2017 referendum can only have the IN voters voting on a promise of "Jam tomorrow". The Jam in this case being "associate membership".

Of course this also means (due to the referendum lock) there will be a second referendum within around 5 years of the 2017 one. Thats 2023 (inside the next parliament). so its then a question of who is best to have in government for that one.
Chris Whiteside said…
Yes, you are undoubtedly right that the referendum will have a big influence on the 2020 election situation - and so might the prospect of a further referendum on any treaty change if the IN-OUT referendum has not already produced a "No" vote.

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