Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

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    Malcolm Blair-Robinson U.S        

    Malcolm Blair-Robinson U.K.

Just short of fifty Labour MPs voted against the welfare cuts while the rest, some apparently with heavy hearts etc, abstained as directed by the pro-tem leadership. Labour is in a bit of a crisis, but it is quite different to the crisis which commentators think they see. Labour’s problem is that most of its leadership and most of the contenders for Leader are New Labour adherents, who have not seen that New Labour is dead and gone. The Tory party under Osborne’s direction has moved to the left and occupied the left of centre ground which New Labour called home. NL could do this because Thatcher had led a major shift of the centre to the right.

As this blog has been continuously pointing out since the election, Labour lost not because Milliband had moved it too far left, but because he had not moved it far enough. The calamity in Scotland, which may be permanent, was because Labour was seen as Thatcher Light and pro austerity. About 3 million of Farage’s votes were working class, which should have gone to Labour.

Once the people who had been brought up to consider Labour their champion saw what Tony Blair’s government was really like, they stopped voting. After the first landslide in 1997 Labour’s vote fell in 2001, 2005 and 2010. Inspite of the Scottish massacre its vote picked up for the first time in 2015 under leftie Milliband who distanced himself from New Labour. The biggest Labour vote, apart from Blair’s 1997 landslide when the Tories were abandoned, was for Neil Kinnock in 1992. After 1997 Labour won by attracting left leaning Tories, but they have now gone back to their roots in the Tory party.

Opinion polls are not being published at the moment while they investigate their debacle in May, but one leaked poll indicates Labour is close to the Tories, because the perception is  that Labour is marching to the left. That is why Corbyn is now out ahead and why he may well win. If he does the Tories will have the giggles and assume victory in 2020 is assured. In reality they can expect a drubbing.

The Thatcher era is well and truly over, not just in the UK but all across Europe. Whatever out of touch politicians say and do, the masses have had enough of austerity, inefficient and expensive privatised utilities, the rich getting ever richer at the expense of the poor and the dominance of capital over labour now greater than at any time since the early days of the industrial revolution.