Tagged with General Election 2017

Labour has a six-point lead against a weak minority government propped up by extremists – we just need another election 

The first poll after the General Election has put Labour ahead by six points, while Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn were tied on ‘who would make the best prime minister’. Survation, who along with YouGov were one of the closest pollsters to predicting the result, had Labour on 45% (+5), Conservatives on 39% (-3), Lib Dems on 7% (-) with UKIP on 3% (+1). The fieldwork was completed on Saturday. YouGov’s poll on who would make best Prime Minister had May on 39% (-4), with Corbyn also on 39% (+7), with the fieldwork done on Friday and Saturday.

Corbyn – having been widely-expected by the commentariat to fall below 200 seats on Thursday – is now in a position of having achieved an astonishing against-all-odds result, and now leading May by six points in the polls – a result that would give Labour a clear majority were there to be another election.  Continue reading →

The Corbyn effect isn’t going away

This article first appeared in the Boston Globe in October 2016, reflecting Jeremy’s second leadership victory. We are republishing it in the wake of the General Election as a prescient analysis of the mistakes that his critics made in underestimating ‘the Corbyn effect’.

The election of Jeremy Corbyn last month as leader of the Labour Party — for the second time in a year, this time with an increased majority — continues to baffle and infuriate his enemies both within and without his party, as it does the serried ranks of Britain’s commentariat. Even The Guardian newspaper, for so long the Bible of the typical left-leaning British liberal, has been vehement in its opposition to Corbyn. Its strictures weren’t just ignored; a proportion of its readership is angry and gives every impression of feeling betrayed.

How is it, critics ask, that a majority of Labour’s membership — now over a half million — should go against the bulk of the parliamentary party and most of a shadow Cabinet that had resigned en masse in a failed attempt to defenestrate their leader? And what of the increasingly strident warnings of a former Labour leader, Tony Blair, who helped win general elections for a party that has spent rather too much time in opposition over the decades? Continue reading →

The election is over – now the real work continues.

And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They’re quite aware of what they are going through…

– David Bowie, Changes

What have the last few days told us? Last year, during the second Labour leadership contest, I argued that we needed to give Jeremy Corbyn the chance to put his agenda and policies before the electorate. As a steadfast Corbyn supporter, this election night had even more at stake for me, if possible, than usual. I had heard people telling me Corbyn’s message did not connect, that this would be the end, the destruction of the Labour Party – a party I have campaigned for since I was a child.

But I had felt the hope in the air, and I identified with it, and felt more represented by this Labour party than I had ever been before. I believed that there was an appetite for the direction that Corbyn was taking the party in. For a party that employed process, rather than be blocked and hindered by it. A party that utilised enthusiasm and initiative, rather than squashing it. A party that had the courage to look at pockets of pessimism that had taken root in some quarters and challenge them. And declare that we can, and will, do things differently. Continue reading →

Who has eaten their humble pie?

Matthew Goodwin eats his book live on Sky News

Before this election, Jeremy Corbyn was subjected to such incredible levels of hostility from sections of the media that even David Dimbleby, along with a former chair of the BBC Trust, former BBC politics editor Nick Robinson and a BBC investigation into Laura Kuennsberg began to criticise his treatment by some journalists.

The offices of the Guardian and Observer have been at the forefront of this, and have churned out tens of thousands of words in anti-Corbyn blogs and op-eds in the past two years. Someone has even compiled 24 of their most vitriolic anti-Corbyn hit pieces. 

Of course, much of the criticism Corbyn came in for was spurred on by fellow Labour Party politicians, who helped drive and shape a news agenda that focused on Corbyn’s apparent incompetence or unsuitability, by simply providing broadcasters and broadsheets with what they wanted to hear. Evidencing this, Channel 4 news recently published a video featuring dozens of clips of senior Labour MPs and politicos predicting doom if Corbyn remained as leader.

Since Thursday night however, our well-salaried commentariat and the backbenches of the Parliamentary Labour Party have been falling over themselves to recant their words. A huge deluge of ‘mea culpas’ and apologias have littered the pages of the Guardian and Observer, and across the airwaves of Sky and the BBC.

One pundit literally ate his words, chewing through his new book live on air. Continue reading →

Labour in Wales: A success that dare not speak its name

Welsh Labour leader Carwyn Jones

From Bridgend to Wrexham, it seemed that no pub, club, café or shopping centre was without a journalist  looking for a Labour voter intending to turn Tory. Anyone muttering about ‘voting for Theresa May’ could be sure of an attentive ear. It was, after all, the official line put out by Tory Central Office that the Tories were going to end Labour’s century-long domination of Wales. The strategy was simple: Wales had voted Brexit, in previous elections many voters in Labour seats in the industrial south and north-east had turned to UKIP and now their vote was in freefall, the Tories were delivering Hard Brexit, ergo those Leave and UKIP supporters would turn to the Tories. To ease their passage over to the dark side Theresa May made three visits during the campaign. Continue reading →