The failure of leadership behind Labour’s general election defeat
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Version 0 of 1. Letters: Readers respond to an article by Owen Jones in which he said that Labour faced a remorseless assault but Corbyn and the left must own their mistakes Owen Jones (Brexit and self-inflicted errors buried Labour in this election, Journal, 19 December) ignores some inconvenient facts when he claims that backing a second referendum was fatal to Labour’s election chances. In April 2019 Labour was polling at about 33%. Support dropped to 22% following the national executive committee’s vote not to back a second referendum and after the prolonged Labour-Tory Brexit talks ended. Six days later Labour won only 13.6% of the vote share in the EU elections. The Brexit party got most votes nationally, including in Labour-held and remain-voting seats such as Exeter. Support hovered at 22%-25% until conference backed a second referendum in September. Thereafter it steadily rose, peaking at 32% in the election. Leave voters were attracted to the simplicity of the Tory message on Brexit. There was no way for Labour to counter that, given their catastrophic error of agreeing to an election on the Tories’ terms before Brexit was “done” or “sorted”. What the second referendum commitment did help them do was to win back some remain voters and gain tactical votes. This was enough to win Canterbury, among other seats. If the pivot had come earlier and more clearly they would have kept Kensington (lost by 150 votes) and seats in the north such as Bury North, where remain parties more than doubled their vote compared with 2017 to over 20,000. The Tories won by 105 votes. Magi YoungExeter • And so the period of so-called reflection goes on with Owen Jones’s article. The policies were seemingly fine, Brexit was an insoluble issue, the media was unfair and the leadership made some severe mistakes. No, this electoral rout was down to Jeremy Corbyn and the people around him in the leader’s office and was four years in the making – a complete failure in political leadership led to the final reckoning last week on all counts. Trust in the leader is the prerequisite for getting a hearing on any policies – that is the top and bottom of the whole period of reflection. If the next leader appears to voters as a potentially competent head of government then Labour will be on the long road back to credibility as an effective opposition. Andy SellersStockport • The “self-inflicted error” that Owen Jones fails to mention is the still-hard-to-believe one to vote for the holding of the election we’ve just endured. If the controlling mind of the Labour party couldn’t get that no-brainer right, then no wonder they’ve made such a complete and utter mess of things over at least the last two years.Tim DaviesBatheaston, Somerset • Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com • Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters • Do you have a photo you’d like to share with Guardian readers? Click here to upload it and we’ll publish the best submissions in the letters spread of our print edition |