
By Lord Ashcroft
This article first appeared in the Mail on Sunday
“They take our votes for granted and think we were born yesterday.” So said a former Labour voter last month in the North East of England, reflecting on what had become of the party he once regarded as his own. While Labour had once been for “normal working people, who pay for their house, pay for their car,” it was now mostly for “young people and students, and the unemployed” – that or “middle-class radicals,” and “people in London who go on marches to get rid of Brexit.”
Such views, which emerged in the research for Diagnosis of Defeat, my new report on where Labour stands with the voters following its worst defeat since 1935, tell us even more about the party’s predicament than the election result itself. While senior Labour figures and the party’s own official inquiry claim the outcome was all about Brexit, the truth is that their problems go much deeper. While many did vote to get Brexit done, more serious still was the principle that when it came to the referendum result – but not just that – Labour no longer listened to them. The party had become too left-wing, could not be trusted with the money, and seemed to have adopted values far removed from their own sensible, practical outlook on life. Many described Labour’s manifesto, with its wild spending promises and expensive irrelevancies like free broadband, as “pie in the sky.”
It is Labour members, now pondering the choice of leadership candidates, who will decide which direction to take their party. Meanwhile, in America, a similar drama is being played out. Labour’s recent history should serve as a cautionary tale for their allies in the US Democratic Party as they shape up for their battle with Donald Trump in November’s presidential election. The parallels are not exact, but close enough for the Democrats to beware of enacting a transatlantic sequel to the Corbyn story (more…)