Ed Miliband managed to do what 30 years of militant tendency entryism failed to do. He delivered the British Labour Party to the far left.
By allowing anyone to join the Labour Party for £3 to vote for its leader, far left activists were able to join online and vote in a leader and certainly re-elect him in the forthcoming challenge.
Far left control of the National Executive and National Conference means the Left will never have to agree to a less favourable form of electing the leadership. Corbyn plans to remove the parliamentary party from approving developing policy and nominating leadership candidates.
A Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn and then John McDonnell and other grumpy old socialists will never win a British general election. They will be massacred in 2020.
John McDonnell is good at saying there is much agreement on domestic policy but some want to go faster. That agreement is to be a more radical government than the Attlee government.
Labour was elected in a landslide in 1945 in the hope of a Better Britain. It was re-elected by 5 seats in 1950 in a time far more forgiving of socialism and the growth of government. Labour lost the 1951 general election and stayed out of office for the next 13 years.
If Labour wants to win a 2020 election in the United Kingdom of England, Wales and Northern Ireland, it must win 6% more of the vote and win England for one of the few times in its history. There will be no Scottish MPs to join in coalition in 2020.
If Labour is ever to be an effective opposition, an opposition that might actually win the next election by winning England outside of London, the party must split, discard the far left and become a social democratic party under a firm control of its MPs.
When four leading MPs left in 1981, they were able to cobble together 25% of the popular vote in the 1982 British general election in an alliance with the Liberal Party.
Imagine if 100-150 MPs left to form a new party big enough to be the official opposition now. They would have a real chance of killing off the left-wing rump in 2020 and winning in 2025.
That is better chances that they have now assuming there is no mandatory reselections and mass de-selections of MPs who do not support Corbyn. If Corbyn carries out his plan for mandatory re-selections, they have nothing to lose from forming another party and everything to gain.
While standard British Labour Party populist policies resonate with the electorate, all the policies that Jeremy Corbyn brings as a socialist, peacenik and renegade Liberal are deeply unpopular and will be used against him as wedge issues by the Tories.
The popularity of individual policies in the Labour Party manifesto didn’t do them any good at the 2015 general election.
What matters to the voters at the last British general election was that brand Labour was down on the nose. It was not a credible alternative government.
Jeremy Corbyn is much further to the left than Ed Miliband, who lost the election in 2015 rather badly because he was too far to the left for the taste of the British electorate.
Fascinating. Yawning chasm between why Labour members think they lost and why voters think they did. From @thetimeshttp://t.co/MvhZYI2CTr— Joe Watts (@JoeWatts_) July 23, 2015
Ed Miliband was rejected in the 2015 British election because he was not a fiscal conservative nor a credible economic manager. The anti-austerity message loses votes.
There is a yawning chasm between the reasons why the left of the Labour Party thinks their party lost the 2015 British general election and why Labour voters thought they lost the election.
That deep unpopularity of Jeremy Corbyn sacrifices the one winning advantage that British Labour has under Jeremy Corbyn. That advantage is governments tend to lose elections rather than oppositions win them.
Schumpeter disputed the widely held view that democracy was a process by which the electorate identified the common good, and a particular party was then elected by the voters because it was the most suited to carrying out this agreed common good:
The people’s ignorance and superficiality meant that they were manipulated by politicians who set the agenda.
Although periodic votes legitimise governments and keep them accountable, their policy programmes are very much seen as their own and not that of the people, and the participatory role for individuals is limited.
Schumpeter’s theory of democratic participation is voters have the ability to replace political leaders through periodic elections.
Citizens do have sufficient knowledge and sophistication to vote out leaders who are performing poorly or contrary to their wishes. The power of the electorate to turn elected officials out of office at the next election gives elected officials an incentive to adopt policies that do not outrage public opinion and administer the policies with some minimum honesty and competence.
Power rotates in the Schumpeterian sense. Governments were voted out when they disappointed voters with the replacement not necessarily having very different policies.
The challenge for British Labour is Corbyn cannot win unless he projects minimal competence and stops having policies on defence, foreign affairs and terrorism that outrage public opinion.
Jeremy Corbyn has plenty of outrageous opinions and is yet to show even the most basic competence in running the office of opposition leader, working 24/7 as opposition leader, and showing some ability to win support from members of the Parliamentary Labour Party. If Jeremy Corbyn cannot win votes of his own MPs, what chance do he have with the British people whose interests he claims to champion.
Great chart. Labour not keen on choosing on leaders who can win elections, 1906-2015. Contrast the Tories http://t.co/VBlT7k5ONB— paulkirby (@paul1kirby) September 12, 2015
Rob Salmond has written a great blog this week on the ideological spectrum of New Zealand voters based on the New Zealand Election Study.
In the course of his blog he drove a tremendously big stake through the heart of the old left fantasy that if Labour or Greens goes left, a large block of voters not voting for them now or not voting at all (the missing million voters) will shake lose its false consciousness and follow you:
But “pulling the centre back towards the left” is massively, massively hard.
You win those people over by being relevant to them as they are, not by telling them they’re worldview needs a rethink. It is just basic psychology. Tell people they were right all along; they like you. Tell people they were wrong all along; they don’t.
And if you win a majority of centrists, you win. The New Zealand Election Study series records six MMP elections in New Zealand – the three where Labour did best among centrists were the three Labour won.
That’s another message from the academic study I quoted above – in Germany, Sweden, and the UK, the elections where the left did best among centrists were the elections where they took power. As their popularity among centrists declined, so did their seat share.
What is more disturbing for the old left fantasy of the missing million is voting for the Labour Party or Greens is correlated with ignorance rather than knowledge.
Furthermore, the more people know about economics, the less likely they are to vote for the left as Eric Crampton explains:
When they get to the polls, the ignorant are significantly more likely to support the Labour Party (4% increase in predicted probability for a standard deviation increase in ignorance) and significantly less likely to support the Green party (1% decrease in predicted probability) and United Future (0.5% decrease in predicted probability).
Understanding economics strongly predicted supporting National in 2005, which comes as little surprise: the National Party leader was former Governor of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. A standard deviation increase in our “economic thinking” index correlates with a 5.7% increased probability of voting National, a 1.5% decreased probability of voting NZ First, and a slight decrease in the probability of voting United Future and Maori.
To make matters worse, Crampton found that joining political organisations does little to cure ignorance of politics or otherwise lead to a political awakening. Sometimes active political affiliation reduces ignorance, other times such organisational membership intensifies ignorance.
Anti-establishment candidate with fringe views draws huge crowds in sure-fire guarantee of electoral success http://t.co/P7waxqUXrR— Alex Wickham (@WikiGuido) August 03, 2015
Fascinating. Yawning chasm between why Labour members think they lost and why voters think they did. From @thetimeshttp://t.co/MvhZYI2CTr— Joe Watts (@JoeWatts_) July 23, 2015
Jeremy Corbyn has done it. The working hypothesis of the far left everywhere is if the Labour Party were to adopt hard left policies, they would win many more votes.
The new votes include shy Labour voters parking their vote with the Tory party pending the call home to a true Labour Party.
They are parking their votes with other parties because they are fed up with a middle of the road Labour Party, such as the Blairite Labour Party. They are withholding their vote as punishment until the Labour Party returns to its roots and adopts hard left policies.
Rather than accept that their day has come, the left of the Labour Party is deeply suspicious of Tory party supporters wanting to join the Labour Party in anticipation of voting in hard left leadership in their current leadership election. What’s going on?
What seems to terrify the Labour Party is its old dream coming true: a large number of Tory party voters switching their support to Labour and joining the Labour Party because it might adopt hard left policies and a hard left leader who makes Michael Foot look like a pussycat.
What is more jarring than the fear of the Labour Left having its dreams come true is the Left of the British Labour is not showing against any insight into the genuine enthusiasm that the Tory party has for Jeremy Corbyn winning the election as leader of the Labour Party
There is no misdirection here or double play. The Tory party wants Jeremy Corbyn to be elected leader of the Labour Party.
The Liberal Democratic party must see their resurrection coming in the form of Jeremy Corbyn as do UKIP in terms of making inroads into working-class labour electorates.
There are left-wing and fairly left-wing people who do vote for the Tory party and the LDP, but there’s not that many of them, and overall they only make up about 15% of the British electorate, and a small part of the left-wing vote not voting for left-wing parties.
It would seem more reasonable to follow the median voter theorem and go for those in the centre because there are plenty of them and only minor modifications of your platform are required to win their votes.
Anti-establishment candidate with fringe views draws huge crowds in sure-fire guarantee of electoral success http://t.co/P7waxqUXrR— Alex Wickham (@WikiGuido) August 03, 2015
Why is the far left chasing with these shy Labour voters when there are plenty more middle of the road voters willing to vote for them in 2015 in the right circumstance?
…while the average UKIP or Tory voter is well to the right of Labour there are many Conservative and UKIP supporters who are in the centre ground and whose votes Miliband cannot afford to write off. For example, nearly four in ten UKIP supporters and 16% of Conservative voters place themselves on the centre point or to the left of centre.
The go left young man, go left strategy is a view of many in the Labour Party in New Zealand, Australia and the UK is if they present hard left policies to the electorate, they will mobilise many more votes from people who are currently don’t vote or who are mysteriously parking their vote with the Tory party or other centre parties.
Michael Foot’s attempt at to get out shy Labour voters with a hard left campaign in the 1983 British general election, which lead to his manifesto earning the title the longest suicide note in history.
The eight foot high stone monolith Ed Miliband planned to erect in the garden of number 10 Downing Street, if he could get planning permission, was dubbed the heaviest suicide note in history.
The New Zealand Labour Party went left at the 2014 general election and for its troubles earned its lowest party vote since the party was founded in 1919.
Central to the strategy of the New Zealand Labour Party in the 2014 general election was mobilising non-voters in their working-class electorates.
The median voter theorem be dammed! The New Zealand Labour Party in the 2014 general election honestly believed that hard left policies would induce these non-voters to vote.
These non-voters are called the missing million by the New Zealand left . Almost one million people did not vote in 2014; 250,683 were not enrolled, while 694,120 were enrolled but did not turn out to vote. Many of these voters were thought to be just parking their vote pending the arrival of true believers to lead the Labour Party if the Left over Left is to be believed! Many of these non-voters are younger voters who generally are more likely to vote left.
The Internet – Mana party also spent an immense amount of the $4 million donated by Kim.com in trying to turn out to the youth voter as well.
Chris Trotter was wise and prophetic on go left young man, go left and the shy Labour voters will come:
[T]he Left has been given an extraordinary opportunity to prove that it still has something to offer New Zealand …..
If Cunliffe and McCarten are allowed to fail, the Right of the Labour Party and their fellow travellers in the broader labour movement (all the people who worked so hard to prevent Cunliffe rising to the leadership) will say:
“Well, you got your wish. You elected a leader pledged to take Labour to the Left. And just look what happened. Middle New Zealand ran screaming into the arms of John Key and Labour ended up with a [pitiful] Party Vote …
So don’t you dare try peddling that ‘If we build a left-wing Labour Party they will come’ line ever again! You did – and they didn’t.”
Be in no doubt that this will happen – just as it did in the years after the British Labour Party’s crushing defeat in the general election of 1983. The Labour Right called Labour’s socialist manifesto “the longest suicide note in history” and the long-march towards Blairism … began.
The most obvious flaw in the missing million and non-voter argument where they are waiting for true believers to offer hard left policies is a countries with much higher rates of voter turnouts and compulsory voting are not more likely to have left-wing governments.
There is much more evidence of shy Tory voters rather than shy Labour voters.
Shy Tory votersis a name invented by British opinion polling companies in the 1990s. The share of the vote won by the Tories in elections was substantially higher than the proportion of people in opinion polls who said they would vote for the party.
The final opinion polls gave the Tories between 38% and 39% of the vote – 1% behind the Labour Party. In the final results, the Conservatives had a lead of 7.6% over Labour and won their fourth successive general election.
Because of this turnout of shy Tory voters, the Tories won 3 million more votes than the Labour Party. This 14 million votes was more votes than they or any other British political party is ever won in a British general election, breaking the record set by Labour in 1951.
In a subsequent marketing research port, it was found a significant number of Tory party supporters refusing to disclose their voting intentions both the opinion poll companies, and exit polls.
This shy Tory factor is so large that opinion poll companies attempt to account for it in the weights they assign in their opinion polls surveys.
One of the explanations behind the turnout of the shy Tory vote in the 2015 British general election was a fear that a Labour Party minority government would be be holding to the hard left Scottish nationalists.
A number of British media commentators talked about running into many ordinary people expressing that very fear and they were undecided voters. About 20% of British voters were undecided on the eve the election, which is an unusually high amount.
Ironically, Neil Kinnock, the British Labour Party leader in the 1992 election, warned of a shy Tory factor a few days before the current British general election.
Tony Blair was much blunter a few months before the British general election about the relevance of the median voter theorem to British politics and the future of the British Labour Party. The most electorally successful politician in Labour history said that May’s general election risks becomes one in which a
traditional left-wing party competes with a traditional right-wing party, with the traditional result.
Asked by the Economist magazine if he meant that the Conservatives would win the general election in those circumstances, Mr Blair replied: “Yes, that is what happens.”
Many of your drinks will be prompted by variations on this perennial theme. Labour accepted the austerity narrative. Labour weren’t green enough. Labour weren’t radical (which has somehow come to be used as a synonym for left-wing).
Given that the last time Labour won an election without Tony Blair was 1974 it’s hard to believe people still think the answer is to move left. But people still do. I sort of love these people for their stubbornness. But I don’t want them picking the next leader.
The shy Tory vote stirred by the fears of a hard left government happened in the 2014 New Zealand general election. On the Monday night for the election that Saturday, the Internet – Mana party board had an hour of television for their Moment of Truth. This included Edward Snowden beamed in from Moscow put forward a whole range of bizarre conspiratorial theories about NASA surveillance of New Zealand and analysis by base in Auckland.
David Farrar reported that in Tuesday night opinion polling, the National party’s party vote rose from 44% to 47%. In the subsequent general election that Saturday, the national party led all night for the first time. It won as many votes as it did in the previous election when it was expected to lose votes because the national party government was going into its third term.
One reason for shy Tory voters is expressive voting. People obtain more sense of identity by proclaiming themselves to be a left-wing voter than they do from saying that they are a right-wing voter.
The expressive aspect of voting is “action that is undertaken for its own sake rather than to bring about particular consequences” (Brennan and Lomasky 1993, 25). There is almost never a causal connection between an individual’s vote and the associated electoral outcome. Hence, a vote is not disciplined by opportunity cost.
With no opportunity cost of how you vote in terms of deciding the outcome, people vote expressively to affirm their identity. Voting is about who and what you boo and cheer for and how you present yourself to the world.
Through the fatal conceit and the pretence to knowledge, a left-wing vote allows people to identify with doing good and changing the world for the better. No point in voting that way if you don’t go around thumping your chest proclaiming yourself as doing good for others by voting Left including telling the truth to polling companies.
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Examining Gender Identity ideology and its impact on Women's Sex based rights and Gay Rights. Exploring how this has taken such firm root in Western societies (Cognitive & Regulatory Capture).
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