By Dennis John, December 2019
“The exit poll has been conducted and the results are that the Conservatives have a majority of 86 seats. This exit poll predicts that the Conservatives will have 368 seats, which would be a very good night for the Tories. On the other hand, Labour look like they are going to have a disappointing night with 191 seats. This would be a 71 seat loss from the previous election. But remember, this is only an exit poll.”
These were the results of the exit poll from the BBC’s Huw Edwards. Unfortunately for Labour supporters, the numbers roughly remained the same: 365 vs 203 seats for the two parties. But why did this happen?
There are two main and two secondary perspectives to why Labour didn’t do too well in the election. The main reason has got to be the crumbling of Labour’s “red wall”. This is a term used to describe around 60-70 seats spread across the northern sections of England and Wales, which have been the bedrock of the Labour party for generations. Another key important thing to realise is that these were places where there was a feeling of being English/Welsh rather than British, and there was a strong vote to Leave in the 2016 referendum, where around 60% of people voted to leave. The Conservative slogan, and a message that Boris Johnson really hammered home, was “Get Brexit Done”. Meanwhile, the Labour Party were intent on proving that Johnson would sell off the NHS to American multinational companies. The truth be told, this was indeed a Brexit election. Most voters, including Remainers, felt that Brexit was plaguing British politics for too long, and as a result other issues were simply being pushed away, including, for example, the NHS. As a result, the voting demographic wanted to move on, and there was a general feeling that voting Labour would mean more and more useless debating in the House of Commons.
The second reason, according to lots of people, is not that Labour were targeting the wrong message, but rather they had the wrong people in charge. Jeremy Corbyn has been continuously scrutinized by the British media for being unable to deal with anti-Semitism in his party. Corbyn and John McDonnell have been accused of imposing the party’s furthest left policies for decades. And Corbyn had been one of the most unpopular party leaders for 45 years, having an approval rating of 23% and a disapproval rating of 66%. However, it must be said that Johnson struggled with Islamophobia, which did seem to go under the radar from media coverage. Furthermore, Johnson’s approval ratings weren’t much better than Corbyn’s at all.
A third, but less significant reason, could be the use of social media. Labour always got resounding levels of support on social media, leading some to believe that Corbyn would do quite well. However, in complete truth, we need to analyse the split of the voting demographic. This enables us to see that Labour voters tended to be younger voters who were more likely to use social media, compared to Conservative voters who were older on average. As a result, social media, for most of the campaign, made it look like the Conservatives were not doing as well as they eventually would on results day.
Finally, the fourth reason was that people didn’t seem to believe that Corbyn would abide by his word and thought that he would increase taxes for not just the corporates, but also for normal people. This is even though there was an almost unanimous higher level of trust in Corbyn than in Johnson from the electorate.
As a result of this shocking election result, Jeremy Corbyn announced that he would not stand for Labour for the next general election. As of the end of 2019, we are still awaiting the results for Labour’s ongoing leadership contest. This loss makes it four losses in a row for the Labour party. In that timespan, politics has changed vastly. Whoever the next Labour leader is will change that timespan accordingly.