ANALYSIS: the lessons of Lewisham for Corbyn and Brexit

by John Ward

Labour saw its majority in Lewisham decline by 75% last night. The main transfer of votes was from Tory to LibDem. Jeremy Corbyn has no chance of forming a government with results like that. The dilemma for Conservatives is just as great in terms of leadership, but less so in terms of General Election votes. As long as their Party is avowedly anti-Brexit, the Corbynistas cannot win power.

¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤

Lewisham has been one of the safest Labour seats in the UK since its creation in 1974. Until last night, it was the 25th safest seat out of 650 in the UK. It isn’t this morning.

Labour won, but its majority was slashed from 21,213 at the general election to 5,629 now. Fine, OK – it was a low turnout. And the Corbynistas have been bleating this as their “explanation” last night and today. But there’s a major flaw in that argument – and beyond the range of  microphones, the Party’s professionals will be chewing on it: Labour is the main Opposition Party facing the most incompetently nasty Tory government in living memory….so why did Tory-haters defect in droves to the Liberal Democrats?

Vinnie Livewire has been basking in a rare ray of hope this Friday morning. He calls it “the biggest swing from Labour to Liberal Democrat in a decade”. Technically he’s correct; but really, it was a swing away from the Conservatives, who plunged into third place behind – well behind – Cable’s Party.

I’m not making silly leaps from a by-election to a General Election….which I now think may not be too far away. I’m merely doing my usual one-man maths show. This is my spiel:

“With revived Tory and SNP Parties north of the border (and the downfall of UKIP) Jeremy Corbyn can only win under our archaic FPTP constituency system if he can be consistently preferred to the LibDems, and able to attract some of the Tory ‘desperates’ direct to Labour.”

If anti-Tory voters revert to shifting towards the Liberal Democrats, Jeremy of Judea doesn’t have a snowball in Hell’s chance of forming a Government – or indeed, even being the largest Party.

If the Party so besotted with everyone called “an expert” can take the bad expert news along with the good, then they should read and learn from this post….you see, I am an expert psephologist and market researcher calling on a half-century of experience. And I am here to tell them that they need a seismic – nay, tectonic – shift in voting behaviour to win a General Election.

There is no sign at all that this is happening.  Take a look at this up-to-the-minute UK poll of polls of you want to see the hard data:

pollopolls1Over the last three months, the change has been so tiny, much of it can be put down to margin of error. The support levels have ebbed and flowed a little, but basically, the 43 – 39 – 8 scores for the three “main” Parties on 27th March were 42 – 38 – 9 on 21st May.

Last night (14th June) the same numbers from YouGov were 42 – 39 – 8.

The simple Truth is this: neither Labour nor Tories are changing minds. And if we observe their respective millstones, it is crystal clear that they’re both hewn from Brexit….the only difference being that the Conservative Party  is felt to be cocking up the negotiations, while the Labour Party’s diehard Remaindeers are not at all popular.

The YouGov study released yesterday shows that 66% of Brits think the Mayflower crew is “handling the Brexit negotiations badly”, but 50% of voters think it would be “illegitimate for Parliament to block Brexit entirely”…..a clear 11% lead over those with a bad case of Adonisitis….

Adonis1

Looked at in this way, one is forced to see the Labour pro-EU position as by far the most onerous, because Corbyn Labour has the bigger mountain to climb.

We are primarily funded by readers. Please subscribe and donate to support us!

The bitter-sweet irony is that – as a known (going back 20 years) eurosceptic, the man presented as The Honest Messiah by his mates in Momentum would probably win a General Election if he stuck to his principles and made it Labour policy to Leave the EU in full recognition of the 2016 referendum.

But Jesus of Islington knows he could never maintain his position as Leader if he did such a thing. There is a vague electoral promise in the Corbynista manifesto to “observe the referendum”, but then that’s what the Tories say too….and look at their disarray.

The sad reality is that Mr Corbyn is out of touch with the electorate when it comes to socialist ideology, and out of touch with his Party when it comes to Brexit. This is not a good look if you’re in the tectonic shift business.

It is tangled web we weave

when practising to deceive

on the question of Leave.

Look Labour folks, from 2012 onwards I advised you to dump Miliband and Balls. You didn’t, and you lost.

When Corbyn was elected Leader, I hailed him as a necessary democratic balance to the rabid Tory dash towards corporate dictatorship.

But on investigation of the Momentum influence (and his dishonesty over the EU question alongside his opportunistic defence of FPTP) I now have little faith in this man’s “commitment to democracy”. Following the 2017 General Election result, I have looked further at the numbers, and the complexity of UK politics, in the context of both Corbyn’s ideology….and his inevitable imprisonment inside a Labour movement that will never reject the EU.

I’m telling you: in his current position – short of a massive global economic catastrophe involving the collapse of the eurozone within the next few months – there is no way Jeremy Corbyn can become Prime Minister of Britain. Because only such an immediate revelation of EU doom would allow him to switch to euroscepticism…and even then, Left dunderheads might continue to cling to the SS Eutanic.

He is in a corner, and he dare not pull out a plum.

________________________________________

Where then, does that leave Mother Theresa? The allegedly greatest thorn in her side Jacob Rees-Mogg has described the PM’s red lines on Brexit as “looking a bit pink”, but he continues to avoid direct confrontation with her. What Fleece-Mob wants is a Swiss-style relationship with the EU involving bilateral treaties. It’s very close to my own objectives, but far too subtle for the by now tabloidised nature of Brexit. I think that those hoping for JR-M to adopt a sort of Wat Tyler attitude to May’s approach are going to be sorely disappointed: he is no more the Messiah than The CorbyNazarene.

The Dump May Intercity train will gather speed when She of the Amazonian Stance can no longer reconcile the Dominic Grieves in the Party with the Boris Johnsons. But will it ever leave the station unless a compromise candidate with solid electoral appeal emerges in the near future?

The United Kingdom is divided by a dozen fault-lines….and we have been stupid enough to let Brussels know this.

Views:

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.