As this weekend's post-mortems of the Gorton & Denton by-election get under way its worth making the key point that I'm sure will be made anyway:
Its not so much that Labour voters have abandoned the Labour Party, but more the Labour Party has been abandoning its Left voters for years;
the lesson of Thursday is taking the Leftish for granted only works when there is no Left alternative.
If Thursday changed anything, it made that much, much clearer!
@ChrisMayLA6 The people who voted Green were the same people Tony Blair told to "get a heart transplant" or the surge of Labour members when Corbyn was leader (he of twice getting more GE votes than Starmer).
The Greens aren't "splitting the Left". They're just… Left.
@Sarahw @KennyPark @ChrisMayLA6
They did ask, there were leaked panicked internal Labour emails about it.
"If Corbyn wins a general election due to all the new Labour voters, then it will be very difficult for us to retain control of the party" was the takeaway mood of those emails. "Us" here means the Blairites, the professional party staffers recruited directly out of university politics and think tanks.
As ever, the Iron Law of Institutions holds: people inside an institution will tend to be willing to sacrifice the institution's overall good in order to ensure their factional control over that institution.
Emeritus Prof Christopher May
Kenny Park
Sarah W
Passenger
Walrus 🏴