Caroline Flint

Just been watching her on Sky News talking about the loss of the election and the reasons. God, she was scathing. She talked about the Brexit position and how they ignored the leave voters of the north.

At one point she quoted Emily Thornbury talking to her and she apparently said "I am glad my constituents aren't as stupid as yours"

Sums up in one sentence why hundreds of thousands of people no longer believe labour represents them so deserted them in the election booth

 

I quoted her tweet the day after election day, and yet Corbyn still deludes himself that the hard left win the argument and are desperate to hold into power.

 

You talk some nonsense. It's got nothing to do with 'the hard left'. The policies were popular here and are popular right across Europe. Ironically it was the moderate liberal end of the party that swung Corbyn away from backing any kind of leave.

Labour was doomed from the moment an election was called because of Brexit. The party was split down the middle and so were the Labour voters. If they backed Leave, all the Remain constituencies would have voted Lib Dem and they'd have still haemorrhaged loads of seats.

Tory divide and rule at its finest.

Anyhow, all those 'feckless scroungers', all those food banks that 'don't exist', the lack of childcare provision, public services they've cut, kids going hungry, parents with no universal credit payments, people dying and been told they're fit for work, schools asking for money to buy pencils - they broke it all and now they can't blame Labour councils.

They run the country and those constituencies. Lock, stock and barrel. A long overdue dose of reality is about to hit home for those new Tory MP's instead of heckling from the sidelines. They can no longer deny those peoples existence and the problems they face.

And better still they have to fix all that in the face of Brexit and at best, an uncertain economic outlook.

 

An interesting piece from Len McCluskey.

Like most elections, this one was not won or lost during the campaign', he wrote.
'And it is Labour's slow-motion collapse into the arms of the People's Vote movement and others who have never accepted the democratic decision of June 2016 for a single moment which has caused this defeat.
'As important as it is, too often, Labour addresses the metropolitan wing of its electoral coalition in terms of values - openness, tolerance, human rights - and the 'traditional' working-class wing simply in terms of a material offer, as if their constituencies did not have their own values of solidarity and community.'

 

Hasn't she been charged with assault on her boyfriend?

Bet she doesn't get the Love Island gig next year.

 

It's an excellent point. The liberal Remain end of the party is quick to gun down Corbyn, yet they've seen their own argument that Corbyn needed to back Remain/Referendum to win an election utterly demolished. Yet not an ounce of how they got it wrong.

Odd that.

 

No excuses, there’s no ‘win’ for Labour coming out for Remain or Leave.

they’re going to have to accept that keeping their gobs shut and their powder dry for a while about Brexit is the best option.

Concentrate on holding the government to account (the job of the opposition) on disability, poverty and social issues.

 

It's hard to say what the result of backing leave would have been, but its categorically been shown that backing another Referendum (which to many was essentially a vote for Remain) was a political failure.

 

Trying to keep out of these posts but it is hard.

Boris now "owns" Brexit. If things go badly it will end up clearly at his door & the ERG in the Tory Party. There won't be an election for 5 years. All Labour can do now is regroup & focus on getting back to basics. There were too many promises in the manifesto TBH, should have kept it simple to the heath service, social care, housing & the environment & left some of the other stuff as more long term projects.

 

Jon Trickett in Hemsworth has also made similar points.
“The party needs to look further afield than a handful of seats in central and north London and find a leader who represents the people we have sorely failed to speak to in recent years.
“People who work hard and are perhaps not well off, but play by the rules and live decent lives, need to feel at the core of Labour’s vision.
“A key test of any new leader is if he or she can speak to them without patronising them.”
Mr Trickett also took aim at the team around Mr Corbyn for Labour's massive loses in Thursday’s election.
He added: “Never again must the bulk of our senior decision-makers and advisers be drawn from a narrow cultural circle, such as the more prosperous parts of London.”

Apologies but I can't just find the article again but he also said he had warned the party incessantly and that Keir Starmer had shouted him down on every occasion.

 

Is it just me that thinks that a large proportion of the population crave that the major parties move more towards some central ground - whereas I am not an enormous advocate of Tony Blair I don’t think it’s any coincidence that only Labour win in the last 40 years with Labour adopting a less extreme stance.
Just saying.

 

It’s not that difficult.

what’s a known is roughly how Labour support is split Leave / Remain, and the previously known numbers are roughly backed up in Thursdays result.

so round these parts the Labour vote is closer to 50:50 on Brexit but in metropolitan remain areas it’s way higher, which brings us to the approx 65-70% nationally.

just look at Donny North, even if all the 10,000 who left Labour were all because of Brexit, they still got 17000 votes. So if Labour had gone full on Brexit, that gives 17000 votes to the Lib Dem’s, hows that play out elsewhere?

 

Flint may well want to embrace the racist gammons and the ideas of British nationalism most Labour members aren’t so keen on that idea.

To suggest people voted for the tories because Labour no longer represent them would be a valid argument except for the fact they have elected Bullingdon Club etonites who have never done a hard days work in their life and despise people from places like Barnsley.

 

You're absolutely right in principle....and this is clearly the dilemma Labour had, but I think they were over concerned, possibly even panicked by the Lib Dem threat and made the decision that despite it all, the North and Midlands would stay solid.
It's easy to say with hindsight but I think it was a gross error of judgment that a Jo Swinson lead party comprising of party defectors would be a serious threat.

 

One of the things I really liked about Bambo's goal yesterday, was that it was an obvious training ground move. At first, I was saying "What's Bambo doing there? We're 4-2 up FFS!". Then we took the free kick, and our strikers were nowhere to be seen, drawing defenders out of the box and leaving Bambo almost unmarked with a tap in. Felt a bit of a dick to be honest.

 

Ironically Boris took the anti establishment vote by backing brexit even though he is establishment . Trying to push another referendum where remain or remain was going to be on the ballot paper was never going to work . The best thing for labour now is to up sticks from London and take it from there because if they don't I doubt the labour party will be around in 10 years .

 

it’s frankly insane to accept that a load of labour voters would happily vote for a right wing government to ensure Brexit, but then question whether a load of Labour voters would vote for a party with liberal values to stop it.

many of us Labour supporters would happily tactically vote LibDem even without Brexit as an issue. For most Labour voters the ‘worst’ thing about the LibDems is they’re too close to being Tory.

 

I wonder how many Remain Labour voters also deserted Caroline Flint because of her continual Brexit support in parliament. You would have thought that this stance would save her, but she lost more heavily than most. The turnout was down from 2017 and her vote dropped 17.8% compared to 12.7% in Penistone and 7.9% nationally.