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I understand the discussion in the Labour Party this morning is around whether the party has moved too far to the right to try to see off the ReformUK threat, so maybe it should 'pivot' left now to meet the Green threat.
What the discussion seems not to be about: what the party itself actually believes in.
The Labour Party did pivot left, before turning itself inside out to pivot back again to keep the donors onside and destroying itself in the process.
After five years of of increasingly desperate attempts to pretend that the Labour Party had been saved, they've now lost to parties to the left and right of them and are left trapped in the political centre with the equally irrelevant Tories and LibDems.
I haven’t seen much comment on how bad it was for the Tories and LibDems. The Tories’ crisis is surely existential. The combined Tory+Reform vote was still way below the Greens’ – and only about 3,000 more than the last election on a similar turnout – in a constituency Reform and most of the commentariat thought they could win. It seems it was not just a left/green victory – it was a right-wing debacle.
I wonder if Labour’s move to the political centre has taken both ‘one nation’ Tory and LibDem votes – but obviously lost a lot more on the left; while Reform has taken the right-wing Tories. They’re finished, surely.
You're right about the lack of Tory commentary, and I'm sure they're grateful for the focus on other parties because losing the deposit is worse than being hammered by RefUK.
The future of LibLabCon is hard to call, especially if the Greens and RefUK continue to adopt traditional left-right positions to their detriment. I'm cautiously optimistic about the possibility of a Scotland-style wipeout at the next GE, but would they go so far as a merger to survive?
Merging with Reform is not really surviving though. In effect the Tory party is already dong that – Reform is gradually peeling off its right-wing, the brexit split having already peeled off its left.
In France both of the old centre-right and centre-left duopoly parties have been almost eaten up by further right and left parties in national elections, though they survive in local politics. Macron’s ‘renaissance’ might in retrospect be seen as an attempt to save the centre by promising (like Starmer and perhaps Blair before him) to make it ‘new’ – but the status-quo is the status-quo however you talk it up, it’s really not working for large sections of the electorate, and Macron’s (and Starmer’s) historic levels of unpopularity are the result.
@GeofCox Absolutely! I used to know what the Labour Party stood for - it was written on the back of my membership card. "To secure for the workers, by hand and by brain, the full fruits of their labours and the most equitable distribution thereof, based on the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange." I don't think anyone in the #GreenParty would disagree with that basic idea. #GortonAndDenton
@GeofCox It’s a no brainer really. Their ideas and policies need to arise from deep and clearly stated beliefs. That’s all. It’s not rocket science. Their natural constituency will find them and vote for them. This is now a party of opportunistic wannabes with pseudo beliefs for hire. The problem is the voters see through that.
Just heard Hannah Spencer speak - sounding just like Labour used to.
