jeff_goldblum
Full Member
- Joined
- Dec 6, 2011
- Messages
- 3,917
Because despite those numbers a majority of Labour constituencies are Leave majority. Even though this doesn’t matter as much as it sounds, because the Labour vote in those constituencies is still majority Remain, the thinking from some is that it would still cost them lots of seats. It may be true, but it implies that not backing Remain isn’t going to cost you even more seats anyway, when your majority Remain supporters aren’t backed.
End of the day though, Corbyn clearly isn’t a Remainer and has no intention of backing Remain with the party. I gave him the benefit of the doubt on this, thinking it could have just been political calculation, but given the situation and the recent election results, that is no longer tenable. He has stated endlessly that he wants to represent the views of membership not just tell the party what to do, and he’s now proven that he’s a liar.
On your first paragraph, there is evidence that suggests that if Labour lost 1/4 of their Leave voters across the board they'd lose more seats than if they lost 1/4 of their (much larger) Remain vote. In many of Labour's Remain seats in metropolitan areas they could lose 10,000 - 20,000 votes to the Lib Dems and still win the seat by a country mile, whereas if a few thousand Labour Leavers voted Tory in Leave seats in the North East a lot of safe seats would suddenly be marginals and we'd see the first Tory MPs up here for 30 years or so.
Having said that, I think the lesson from the European elections could be that Remainers who voted Labour in 2017 are far more likely to vote on a single-issue basis than the Leavers who voted Labour in 2017. The evidence I've seen from traditional non-metropolitan Labour areas is that most of the true single-issue Brexiteers jumped ship in 2015 to UKIP and then went to the Tories in 2017. Amongst Labour voters from 2017 who voted Leave in 2016, most are dyed in the wool Labour who will stick with the party regardless of their Brexit position and a minority were happy to vote Labour in 2017 when they supported a soft-Brexit but would take their vote elsewhere if Labour backed a 2nd referendum. The question is whether that second group is large enough to do any significant damage to Labour's electoral prospects; on the basis of the evidence I've seen it probably isn't and it seems like poor strategy to lose huge numbers of Remainers to the Lib Dems in order to keep a small minority of Leavers on side.
I generally support Corbyn but I can't disagree with you on your second paragraph. I think 'the plan' (if it ever was one) to sit on the fence and throw a bone to both Leavers and Remainers worked well in 2017 but his failure to come off the fence since then has been a disaster both in terms of 'optics' for Labour and in terms of his personal credibility as a supporter of greater party democracy. I think he'll come round eventually but he's pissed off so many Remain-inclined people now that it might be too little too late.