That Starmer fella...

This seems a bit of a strange thing to say? Starmer has had it on easy mode, he's essentially just had some people grumbling on social media.
Wait until you get a sustained attack from the blue ticks, your party trying to stab you in the back (and front), a hostile media and smears to deal with.

Corbyn was up against the worst PM in recent history and he still managed to finish 2017 55 seats down to her. The Socialist Campaign Group of MPs have been briefing against Starmer since day one, and in the last few months, referring to leadership challenges. If SCG had the numbers, they'd trigger a leadership challenge just like the PLP did against Corbyn. It's only the fact that they're such a small number of MPs which has meant they can't.

I have absolutely no problem with criticising Starmer for stuff he's done, but let's not pretend that factionalism isn't a sword which cuts both ways. Labour will eat itself.

Are we still pretending the 2019 election wasn't a Brexit referendum?

To a point it was, but let's not also ignore the number of people who said they couldn't vote for Corbyn.

If it was a brexit election anyway, then Labour's strategy had been a failure - they convinced both sides they supported the other. How exactly would labour have won being a pale imitation of the Tory brexit vision?

Don't be ridiculous, there were loads and loads of other pivotal issues.

Whatever they were....

The next election will be a Brexit election too. The one after a Brentry one.
Or Engentry if Scotxit/Scotentry has already happened.

a hostile media and smears to deal with

It's possible that Starmer hasn't had the same level of hostile media as Corbyn as Corbyn refused to adjust to the media, and was punished for it.

He was very naive/honest (delete as applicable) and would happily give the media plenty of fodder. All the furore around trident for instance or his recent statement when the report onto anti-semitism was published.

The papers have had a try at Starmer, remember the stories about him being a rich landowner that ended up with it being his mum's donkey sanctuary, but there's not that much for them to get their teeth into.

The papers have had a try at Starmer, remember the stories about him being a rich landowner that ended up with it being his mum's donkey sanctuary, but there's not that much for them to get their teeth into.

Like a sandwich? It's a joke, but the point is, there doesn't need to be anything for a hostile media to be hostile.

A clear Brexit position might explain why the Tories won 2019, but it doesn't explain why Labour lost. To do that you need to look at the post-election polling, especially around the voters who deserted the Labour party in droves. And if you do, in poll after poll it becomes clear that Brexit wasn't the main factor, it was the leadership:

Of course, the one feeds into the other - poor leadership on Skripal and antisemitism bled into a perception of poor leadership on Brexit too - and the flip flop from hard Brexit to PV, while clearly the right thing to do at the time, made us pay a corresponding price in trust. That's just one of the reasons we never should've agreed to an election until Brexit was sorted. I'll never understand why Corbyn agreed to it.

David Runciman has done a couple of interesting podcasts or talks about how the main issue in the seats that flipped from red to blue wasn't people switching from Labour to Conservative but Labour voters not voting at all.

Corbyn agreeing to an election would have gone down extremely badly too. Remember the rhetoric around Parliament being a "dead Parliament" and the increasing anger towards politicians? If that had been allowed to continue, and Corbyn had been held responsible for that, it would have got even nastier.

Corbyn was a very poor leader, but he was also in a difficult bind that no Labour leader could have come out of with ease. Would Owen Smith have done a better job at the 2019 election, for example?

Owen would not have. He's another dullard.

I often wonder what the world would have been like had the Milliband rivalry been resolved the other way? Would he have one? Is he too Blairite?

My wife is convinced there's an alternative reality where David won the leadership contest and then the 2015 election, and Brexit never happened.

I'm less convinced.

And not just because he looked silly with the banana.

We all need a sexy fantasy

I think people focus on vote switchers (as opposed to voters who just didn't vote for 'their' party) because they do double damage - once by losing their party a vote, and another time by gaining their rival party a vote. But the reasons for both (staying home and switching parties) seem broadly consistent:

I do think Brexit generally is a no-win situation for labour, and I agree that Corbyn was faced with some of the worst circumstances possible. But many of those circumstances were avoidable, and I think other leaders would've navigated those challenges better. By the time 2019 came around, I agree, the cards were impossible and no other leader could've done any better. But there were plenty of opportunities to shuffle the deck before then - Corbyn just didn't seem interested.

From the doors I knocked on all over the NW it was pretty evenly split between Corbyn and brexit as to why people wouldn’t vote for Labour. There was genuine anger towards the latter though and those voters won’t be coming back any time soon.

Couldn't agree with you more on that. Labour argued both in favour of hard brexit (2017) and in favour of PV (2019) and as a Remainer I couldn't trust them, and frankly I can't see why a Brexiter would either. Did you see that anger from the remain or brexit contingent on the doorstep? I'm in Walthamstow so it was a bit of a balance this side, but mostly remainers.

Now they're unambiguously the party of corporate tax cuts, so problem solved.

The latest Runciman Talking Politics is on Conservative policies taking Labour positions, etc. Worth a listen.

I appreciate you dislike Starmer but could you please try to limit your criticism to a factual basis? This isn't helpful. Labour aren't the party of corporate tax cuts. They're still committed to raising corporation tax. Just not during a pandemic.

I couldn't stand Corbyn but I never lied about the guy. My criticism was based on what he did. All criticism should be built on that basis.

The good thing is the press and public like to take the time to understand the complex nuances of Labour's policy positions, so as long as no one summarises them in an unflattering way like I did I'm sure he'll do great.

I don't want to get into a ruck but 'they lied about Corbyn so I'll lie about Starmer' is not an admirable position - apart from anything else, when your criticisms of a politician are true, they bite more. If you really want to have a pop at the guy, stick to facts. It'll be more effective.

Speaking of addressing what Starmer is actually doing, he apparently is whipping Labour to abstain on the policing bill next week that will expand stop and search powers and further criminalise protest. Pretty pathetic stuff to be honest

Speaking of addressing what Starmer is actually doing, he apparently is whipping Labour to abstain on the policing bill next week that will expand stop and search powers and further criminalise protest.

FFS. I hadn't seen this.

The vigil at New Scotland Yard today is also in opposition to the bill.

As of a few minutes ago this has changed, thankfully.

Thanks - and good. But it's a mind fuck that it took this for them to take a position (although, in my opinion, abstaining very much is a position).

Yep, I agree completely.