Andy, Blair won a landslide by uniting the left and right and basically arguing he will shift the party to the centre and there would a trickle down where everyone would feel a difference. And I actually think they did
But there’s numerous data and studies that shows people in the North, Scotland, Wales and the midlands started drifting away as they saw the party no longer represented them.
The cost was Labour haemorrhaged nearly 5 million votes who became stay at home voters or moved to other parties. Course they gained new voters as well as loosing them
This is not some cycle, Andy that parties go through it’s change happening that can be explained and it goes right to the heart of why brexit happened with 60% of Labour constituencies being leave
Course more Labour voters voted remain but it might explain why Starmer is now arguing for workers to be paid more and really work towards the seats outside the metropolitan areas
The landscape is changing quite rapidly right now
Sorry, missed this as wasn't tagged/ didn't get the notification.
I was only about 15 when Blair came in, but reading back I don't think Blair united the left and the right, as there were not many voting for parties left of Labour as there wasn't really any, and the Tories were still very right of Labour, as were millions of people. Hence why Tories still got 10m votes, and Lib Dem got 5m, which combined was more than Labours 13.5m (all in 1997). He did capture the centre though, the most important votes, or enough of them combined with the left to beat those of the right, which is the point I keep banging on about. It's simple maths, you need to take the voters the opposition needs who are at the edge of their political compass/spectrum.
Uniting the left and the centre or maybe even the centre right is a good thing, I think, well it is if you sit somewhere centre left and accept that's the only alternative to having the Tory right (or quite far right as they are now). The UK shifted right with the Brexit vote, Farage, UKIP, Brexit Party etc, it gave it a voice, and they were shouting much louder than the greens, it's crap, but it happened. I think social media causes this problem too, as the far right are much louder, or at least they are better at riling up people into their crap.
Labour were always going to decline after that initial win, and the Iraq war and recession didn't help of course. But of course if Labour had not been in power we would have still gone to the war (all the tories voted for it), and had the recession (largely started by the US, out of our control). What I mean by that is there will always be things which happen which will make life exceptionally hard for who is in charge. The Tories have that now, with Covid, the war, energy crisis, brexit, inflation etc. Yeah, of course they made a hash of all of that (maybe bar supporting Ukraine, they've done ok on that), but even if Labour had been in charge (or anyone) it would have still been a pretty rough few years.
I just think a certain set of voters are easily led (lots of these in red wall seats, on the far right, I meet loads of them each week), and if they get rattled enough (big turnouts in recent elections and brexit etc) then they can make a bit of a mess. There are a lot of them in the shadows, a lot more than you may think. Then if this cage rattling happens when Labour lose the centre then they're screwed.
Loads of Tories voted remain mind, there are a lot of people who vote Tory who think they're middle class or rich (but aren't), but don't realise the Tory party is using them as pawns. They're daft enough to fall into this trap, but when things really get messy they will realise their errors and move to the opposite side who they voted for. I know a lot of people in this position who voted tory and brexit, who now feel a bit conned, they're not far right or so dumb that they cannot realise a mistake. Loads of them I have spoken to are good friends or acquaintances who have said they won't vote Tory again and I don't doubt them (not anymore).
I'd rather it was all as left as some on here want, and I have nothing against what they push for or the policies (of them or Corbyn etc), but I just don't think we've ever going to get that anytime soon, as there are nowhere near enough people who think like that, to win an effective two horse race. It's ****, but we need to accept it's ****, and do what we can with that.
PR could fix the two-horse race problem, but it would also hand a lot of seats to some absolute far-right clowns, who are even worse than the Tories. It may break the Tories in half, but the likelihood is they would still work together, as they would have to, and they would do anything to get control.
I think the landscape of people's views is really changing for the better (after the black hole of 2016-2020), but the population is getting older, and we need to convince those older folk come to the red side, as historically they are heavily only going to vote for themselves.