Sadiq Khan, fresh from his inspirational victory in London in which this blog rejoices, writes in a Sunday newspaper that Labour needs to reach out to win. Oh dear no! This is how New Labour lost Scotland. The SNP became the true socialist party while New Labour was reaching out into oblivion.
What Labour needs to do is turn left and attract back the huge number of working class people who no longer vote. In the mayoral election 55% of Londoners did not vote, but were registered to do so and in the general election in 2015 nearly 40% across the country failed to come out to the polls. Most of these are natural Labour supporters. Labour can win a landslide in 2020 without taking one single vote from the Tories.
To do this is it should stop all this nonsense of reaching out and instead reconnect to the people they were founded to defend and whose lot they were organised to improve. The Tories are polling victories on the lowest votes they have received since well before WWII, when the franchise was narrower and the population smaller. The fact that Labour increased its share of the vote in both the local elections across England and in London, while the Tories dropped, is entirely due to the leftward tilt under Corbyn. What is now needed is a full scale assault on the party of capital, the Tories, for whom people vote if they have something to lose, and a bold programme to restore the power of the Labour Movement for whom people vote if the have something to gain. It is they who are in the majority by a country mile.