I’m not sure how many of you are really interested in my UK election posts, but there won’t be another election for about 5 years so I may as well get them in now
The most surprising thing about the election is how many bedrock Labor seats have switched to the conservatives
There are seats that have literally never been represented by a conservative, that have been with the labor party since the 1930s or earlier that have switched. Solidly red (in the UK Labor is red, Conservatives are blue) areas in Wales and northern England now have blue swaths through them.
Going in to the election there was much talk of the “red wall” which would protect Labor from major losses but that has not.
Or one of the seats that switched is in a place called Sedgefield
The significance being that the prior representative from this seat was a guy named Tony Blair when he was prime minister
So the seat that used to be held by the leader of the Labour party went to the conservatives
It’s almost like a San Francisco seat going for the Republicans, although this seat was not quite as partisan as that
About the only area that seems to be sticking with Labor is London, where younger and more diverse voters are sticking with the party.
In Scotland, the SNP (a party dedicated to Scottish independence) has swept the vote, almost completely wiping out Labor
Overall it looks like the Conservatives will have over 360 seats (326 needed) while Labor will be under 200. Most analysts say that it is unlikely that Labor would be able to recover in just one election, so they could be out in the cold for a decade (though I never fully accept the conventional wisdom so you never know)
As to why, there appear to be several factors
Certainly the debate over brexit is an issue as the swing or shift to conservatives is more pronounced in Pro brexit areas
But it appears a much more significant factor is, as I previously discussed, that the labor party leader Mr Corbyn simply pulled his party too far to the left
Over the past few years there has been a major debate between the moderate and progressive factions of the Labor party (sound familiar ?) with the progressives pushing for significant changes in the status quo, ranging from nationalizing industries to major tax hikes to significant increases in the overall role of government.
While the voters in the UK are certainly more liberal and more open to things like nationalizing utilities than we are here, even they have their limits and a significant majority of Voters, particularly working-class voters, simply were not willing to accept that far of a shift
Of course US politics are different, the Conservative party in the UK would be seen as almost like the Democrats here. But the analogy still works, in that Corbyn is as far to the left of the overall UK spectrum as someone like Sanders is to the US spectrum.
Democrats ignore this at your peril