The Labour Split

Last night I watched This Week on the BBC. There was yet another attack on Jeremy Corbyn from within the Labour Party itself. Or rather from a politician who had recently left the Labour Party, on behalf of that anti-Corbyn faction within it. Urging the party to ditch Jeremy.

Now this caused me to fire off a few tweets.

(That 5% is a total guess, don't hold me to it)

I shouldn't really use Twitter, as on reflection it always just looks as though I'm firing off insults at people (I'm not quite as bad as most people on there, but still, it's all a bit unnecessarily rude and shouty). I think it's the immediacy and shortness of that form of communication that lends itself to confrontation. In many ways it's a great way of debating really, but it makes us all look like dicks. I'm surprised no one has came up with an imitation app just for politics called Parliament to be honest. Maybe they have? I'm too bored to look.

Anyway, to get to the point, the purpose of my tweet was to simply ask what section of the UK demographic a Corbyn-less Labour Party would be aiming to attract.

They ditch Corbyn - losing many of the young student voters and traditional socialists on the left.

They then move even further to the left on Brexit (and consequently immigration), alienating many people to right.

What demographic of voter can they hope to gain from such a move in direction?

It looks like pretty much the Liberal Democrat vote to me.

How many standard voters in the country want a party that's more to the right of Labour as it currently stands, yet with essentially open door immigration? I can't really imagine it's that many people. Plus people really hate Blairism !! As I said in a previous post, many traditional Labour voters in the north of England were envious of Scottish voters for having the SNP as an option during the pre-Corbyn years. Precisely because of the type of socialism the SNP were offering in comparison to Labour.

Personally, I don't think the Labour Party as it currently is under Corbyn has any chance of winning a general election. It is way too far to the left. However, there is a significant chunk of the population (let's say about 25% - but I'm totally guessing really) that hold the traditional socialist values Corbyn stands for. That actually want what Corbyn seems to be offering economically.

Those people are entitled to have a party that represents their views.

Currently, the Labour Party is ideologically split between Corbynites - i.e. that very traditional version of socialism, and New Labourites. People, who in my opinion (as I noted in the tweet) still think it's 1997.

The party really needs to spilt formally, and both sides need to accept that each represents a much smaller chunk of the UK population than they think they do.

If Labour do ditch Corbyn, then that Corbyn faction of voters will, in the short term move to other parties, and in the medium term actually set up their own parties. As is fashionable in politics currently. We'll end up with a true socialist party.

The Blairite, or I guess globalist side of the Labour Party will then be free to go after their target audience. Pro-EU voters, who are a bit to the left of the Conservatives on economics. Or the Lib Dems as we normally call them.