The curious case of Britain’s forgotten 2017 election
JVL Introduction
Nothing tells the story better than the announcement of the exit poll in the 2017 General Election when, amidst the celebrations of Corbyn’s supporters, senior staffers at Labour’s HQ stood, as one of them put it, “silent and grey-faced”.
It represented above all the popularity of the radical socialist policies on which Labour had campaigned – anathema to the Party machine built up assiduously during the Blair years and reinforced during the period of Tory austerity.
Since then, with collusion from the mainstream media, history has been rewritten and the 2017 General Election and its staggering result, airbrushed from history.
Richard Sanders tells the story…
RK
This article was originally published by Middle East Eye on Mon 28 Aug 2023. Read the original here.
UK Labour party: The curious case of Britain's forgotten 2017 election
Corbyn polled just a few hundred thousand fewer votes than Blair in 1997’s landslide and still has higher approval ratings than Starmer. His erasure from UK political memory is telling
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Mathew Goodwin
The apparently objective psephsologist has also left out the huge increase in membership and the election of 2017 in his analysis.
As if proof were needed… Today’s Guardian (p.30) says: “Labour, fearing a repeat of the 2019 election when voters rejected Jeremy Corbyn’s spending plans…” The Labour’s vote winning programme in 2017 is now cast as its vote-losing programme of 2019.
The one thing that Britain and a few other countries in the west are missing is democracy. Real democracy: one person, one vote, no matter how much money you have or is at your disposal.
Capitalism rules the roost, but it is one system that, ultimately over-rides human rights. In its wake, we see the earth as we know it being destroyed.
My own view is that we are coming up to a repeat, modified, of Noah’s flood, but very few people in power seem to be fussed about it all.
Not ‘forgotten’, suppressed.
“Now the people of Britain find themselves presented with a choice between an entirely discredited government and an opposition [which demonstrates] slavish adherence to the … orthodoxies that created the mess in the first place”.
A pungent, exact description of the terrifying political situation we face.
In the real world outside Westminster, those of us with ordinary incomes and life chances see EVERYTHING breaking down horribly and uncontrollably. Healthcare and social care on their knees. Schools unsafe. Basics like housing, energy and transport increasingly unaffordable. Unemployment on the rise.
But the two largest political parties continue living comfortably off the tax-payers, apparently content to serve as parasites.
The first of Laura Kuenssberg’s programmes about the disintegration of British politics focussed on the 2017 election and why the Tory majority in Parliament was shredded. The entire programme was populated with Tory MPs and managers discussing what was wrong with their campaign. Labour, its manifesto and Jeremy Corbyn were not mentioned at all. It was as if the Tories had been the only participants in the election. The mobilisation of thousands of activists, the huge crowds at Corbyn’s election events, the enthusiasm of the young and the popularity of Labour’s programme were not featured at all. It was as if they had never existed. To discuss any election without looking at the performance of the losing party would be ridiculous. In this case where the losers were so close and where all the movement had been in their direction is perverse.
Even more perverse is the determination to ignore and cover up the clear evidence that the near miss was achieved in the face of determined treachery and sabotage of the campaign by a right wing faction inside Labour determined to ensure that Corbyn would lose. Why no expose of this corruption and undermining of the democratic process. Just imagine the press reaction if it emerged that left wing activists had infiltrated Tory HQ and were conspiring to undermine their election campaign.
People would be going to prison!!
From the table in Richard Sanders’ article, one can calculate that the average Labour vote in the three general elections with Blair as leader was 11.26 million. With Corbyn as leader, the average Labour vote in his two general elections was almost a third of a million higher, at 11.57 million. Since WW2, the only Labour leader to achieve a higher average general election vote than Corbyn has been Clement Attlee.
One can argue from these figures that an important factor in maximising the Labour voter turnout at general elections is an unequivocal socialist programme.
The present party leadership’s campaign to rid the party of socialists may serve to keep many potential Labour voters away from the polling stations next time round.
The cancellation of the Corbyn Legacy by the Labour Party leadership and mainstream media demonstrates a major shortcoming of the UK’s political system. Reluctant to entertain any consideration of alternatives to ‘conventional wisdom’, Party leaders, establishment think-thanks and media pundits, are producing an echo-chamber, absent of meaningful dissent. The challenge to those who saw in Corbyn the possibility of significant change in the political and economic order is to revitalise the remnants of that movement, albeit outside the existing Labour Party.
A very good summary re the poltical situation. It seems MSM do not like truth or indeed facts. They just following the right wing agenda that is dominant ideology at the moment.
It was an interesting read but it also brought back the pain and the anger of losing the 2017 Election and the reasons what caused the anger.
Apart from the MSM, including the BBC, pumping out daily Lies and Propaganda against Corbyn, there were the Traitorous PLP MPs and the Traitors at LP Headquarters, all working to stop Corbyn from becoming Prime Minister, what would have been the result if it hadn’t been for those Traitors, most of which are still in the PLP, including Starmer’s Cabinet?
As for the Question that was used frequently in the Press and on the BBC political programmes, “How is Corbyn going to pay for his Manifesto”? Which was fully costed at £49 billion. Well, in his first Budget Hammond gave away £110 billion to Corporations and the Super Wealthy, you could have had 2 Corbyn Manifestos and still had £12 billion over. How come that is never mentioned!!
The broadcasting impartiality rules were abandoned for the 2019 general election.
Endless coverage of traditional Labour voters who were switching to the Conservatives. This was not simply to report on a phenomenon but to encourage it.
No coverage of traditional Conservative voters who were planning to ditch that party. But those voters existed too. In Dominic Raab’s constituency, for example, the Conservative vote fell 9.2%.