The left of the party didn't want to engage with those along the lines of blair, or even those closer to the centre (which they needed to actually win).
Wrong way round, as always. The left were trying to win an election and assumed everyone was working towards that. There's no evidence (that I've seen) to even suggest the left were in any way not engaging with other factions. They may not have agreed with them, or run with their ideas, but the engagement was there - why do you think Corbyn made sure his first cabinet had MPs from all factions?
The Corbyn lot argue that these actions were deliberate attempts to sabotage his campaign (which sounds far fetched at the cost of an election), while us lot will say that resource allocation decisions are complex and driven by various strategic considerations. I don't doubt that others had a batter idea about strategy than Cobyn did, sort of like what has been proven now when Labour have been extremely efficient with votes, the most efficient of any winning party ever.
If you wanted rid of Corbyn and you thought you had a better idea of where funding should be spent, you'd sit back and let Corbyn fail.
Moving funds into safe seats wasn't a strategy that would improve Labour's chances - as you've alluded to yourself it's exactly the opposite that has worked so well for Labour in 2024.
Even if funds were diverted, to undermine him, a decent leader would have spotted this, sorted the factions out and it wouldn't have been a problem.
A secret office was set up. It was a well organised operation to undermine the leadership. Just think what might have happened if the same energy had been put into actually winning the election.
If secretive cabals are so easy to 'sort out', why do so many succeed with coups, assassinations etc. They usually only fail when they are betrayed from within.
Funds were probably diverted to secure red wall seats they were worried about losing, when Corbyn was polling worse. This money will have been moved around well in advance, most likely, but Corbyn's surge came kind of late, to the point where allocating more funds to winnable seats would have been too late anyway. He was still 55 seats behind, would have needed to turn another 28 tory seats red, that's over 10% more seats than they got, it wasn't happening.
It doesn't matter where the funds went. It mattered where they were diverted from. As you keep saying, seats matter. But in 2017 it was Tory seats that mattered. The Tories were expected to extend their existing majority. The election ended in a hung Parliament. <3000 votes in the right places were the difference between May being able to form a government and Labour being the main player in a left-if-centre coalition.
If that funding hadn't been wasted where it wasn't needed then those 3000 votes might have materialised. I think Tom Watson was one of the MPs who had funding diverted to his campaign - he had a 9.5k majority in 2015. He'd have had a 4k majority with the same votes in 2019, ending up with 7.5k or 3500 extra votes. If that was the result of extra funding there then it's hard not to speculate on what could have been if the sabotage hadn't occurred.
I don't think it would have, Brexit was lost in the red wall, that's Labour's watch imo, but I know a lot don't disagree. Turning 2% of voters nationally wouldn't have been that hard, and not letting 2% slip to the other side would have been even easier. You're right about remain being too complacent, I was too early days but later on I wasn't, it looked like trouble.
But Brexit wasn't lost in the red wall due to Corbyn. It was lost due to the utter lack of investment and opportunity that allowed Farage et al to influence people with their fairytales.
However, if you want to blame Labour, then you have to remember that Corbyn's constituents voted Remain at about 70%. Labour MPs in the red wall didn't do enough to explain the issues with Brexit to their constituents.
Yeah may took a shot and won, she didn't win by much, but still won. She practically ended up with majority anyway, or as good as.
She lost her majority. That's a historical and mathematical fact. You can't spin it any other way.
It think Labour were too hard on Miliband in 2015, it was going to be hard to beat the Tories with Cameron first try, parties tend to get more than one term, but it was more up for grabs when that EU vote got promised.
I agree. It was the same people who went after Corbyn who did for Miliband - mainly because they'd wanted his brother to win. Again, the right of the party putting factional preference above party (and national) interests.
2019 was another lock in choice for the tories, they wanted to use that time to leave the EU, take the hit, then show some signs of recovery (to con voters things were going to be ok). But, that ended up being a bit of a poisoned chalice for Tories, as they ended up with covid, energy crisis and inflation etc, those were all coming no matter who was in charge. The blow would have been softer on the working class with Labour though. In hinsight I bet the tories wish they hadn't won in 2019, as they cold have had an election in 2022 then and they would have got more of a free pass with covid etc, but the energy crisis, war, inflation and the extra few years of tory **** ups screwed them up.
I don't follow any of this. 2019 was forced on the Tories. They didn't call the election willingly.
Anyway, it's all done now, onwards an upwards, albeit slowly I expect.
Agreed. Onwards and upwards. There's still a huge battle ahead and a lot of convincing required.
