Elections are not won by despising voters

Airfix

Graduate Poster
Airfix
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Aug 11, 2016
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After 11 years in the wilderness Labour should be doing a hell of a lot better than this.

There's been like 130,000 deaths from Covid because the government's response to a pandemic was botched, how the hell has Labour lost Hartlepool ?
The same contempt for voters seems to exist that has permeated through ever since Gordon Brown was leader.

There is no positive message from Labour, no respect, no hope, no optimism, just bitterness and it is not a vote winner.

Come on Labour ditch Keir Starmer and get a working class politician on the side of the people into the job.

The man has cost Labour the 2017 and 2019 elections, the Hartlepool by election and if my suspicion is correct a lot of council seats as well.
 
Airfix said:
After 11 years in the wilderness Labour should be doing a hell of a lot better than this.

There's been like 130,000 deaths from Covid because the government's response to a pandemic was botched, how the hell has Labour lost Hartlepool ?
The same contempt for voters seems to exist that has permeated through ever since Gordon Brown was leader.

There is no positive message from Labour, no respect, no hope, no optimism, just bitterness and it is not a vote winner.

Come on Labour ditch Keir Starmer and get a working class politician on the side of the people into the job.

The man has cost Labour the 2017 and 2019 elections, the Hartlepool by election and if my suspicion is correct a lot of council seats as well.
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He didn't become labour leader until 2020.

It was Corbyn who took them down to where they are.

Unfortunately Starmer is a decent politician but has no media presence/charisma, which is all that is needed to get votes from the majority of the public. Boris is a prime example, manages to **** up everything he touches but has the public loving him.

Let's face it, the only thing Boris has got right since being in power is the vaccination rollout, and amazingly that was the only project he didn't put into the hands of friends or backers.

ETA. Elections are won by despising voters, just don't let the simpletons realise you despise them.
 
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You're absolutely right, elections are won by not despising voters.

At the moment there is a huge groundswell of right wing populism and the Conservative Party is riding high by pandering to this populism.

If only the Labour Party was willing to pander to these same racists and bigots, make grandiose promises to deliver all kinds of improvements in impoverished areas, demonise sections of the population because of their race, religion, origin or beliefs then they too could be flying high - especially if they had a suitable front man.
 
If any other politician had the positive coverage Johnson has over the years, excusing or ignoring his lies, **** ups, racism, contempt for anyone who isn't him or can't do him a favour and all the rest and bigging up his lame "jokes" and pseudo-Latin bluster they'd be so far ahead in the polls also...So mebbe you can win by despising the electorate when you have friendly stooges who spin that as something else.
 
Carrot Flower King said:
If any other politician had the positive coverage Johnson has over the years, excusing or ignoring his lies, **** ups, racism, contempt for anyone who isn't him or can't do him a favour and all the rest and bigging up his lame "jokes" and pseudo-Latin bluster they'd be so far ahead in the polls also...So mebbe you can win by despising the electorate when you have friendly stooges who spin that as something else.
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This.

To Aifix’s opening post: The current success of the Tories shows that you can indeed win elections by despising the vast majority of your voters.
 
The Don said:
You're absolutely right, elections are won by not despising voters.
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Thank you.

The Don said:
At the moment there is a huge groundswell of right wing populism
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There really isn't.
The Don said:
and the Conservative Party is riding high by pandering to this populism.
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No, they're riding high by saying they're listening.
Also the success of the vaccine programme has given them a boost.

And Labour have done what exactly?

The Don said:
If only the Labour Party was willing to pander to these same racists and bigots
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Most of whom are not racists and bigots but are sick to the back teeth of morons calling them that.

And where is the incentive for someone incorrectly branded a "racist" or a "bigot" to vote for the moron who wrongly called them that ?
There isn't any.

This kind of behaviour which is a product of flawed thinking, is exactly why Labour keep losing and will continue to lose.

They need a leader like Caroline Flint who didn't go in for such crap, a leader who genuinely listens and genuinely cares instead of the sanctimoneous arse Starmer whose remoaning as Shadow Brexit secretary cost Labour the last election.
 
You need to remember how many of these people previously voted Labour, and would again if Labour actually stood for something.
 
Airfix said:
You need to remember how many of these people previously voted Labour, and would again if Labour actually stood for something.
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So this thread isn’t about despising voters? It’s about what policies Labour should adopt? :confused:

In case it is meant to about parties that despise many of their voters - can you provide some examples?
 
Airfix said:
You need to remember how many of these people previously voted Labour, and would again if Labour actually stood for something.
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I thought that was the whole idea behind Corbynism, to return to Labour's socialist roots. :confused:

Turned out that the British working classes wanted a toff-led government who would stick it to the frogs and keep the darkies out.
 
Corbyn had some good ideas and would have had more success with those ideas if he hadn't listened to Starmer regarding Brexit.

69% of people in Hartlepool voted to leave the EU, and a man who wanted to betray them is now Labour leader.

You don't need to imagine anymore how that would go down as Labour have lost what should have been a safe seat.
 
Curious to see how long Labour can blame Corbyn for their own failure as a political party.
 
Airfix said:
Corbyn had some good ideas and would have had more success with those ideas if he hadn't listened to Starmer regarding Brexit.

69% of people in Hartlepool voted to leave the EU, and a man who wanted to betray them is now Labour leader.

You don't need to imagine anymore how that would go down as Labour have lost what should have been a safe seat.
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And if Labour had been strongly in favour of Brexit, as Corbyn wanted, then they would have been at odds with 65% of their supporters.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
Curious to see how long Labour can blame Corbyn for their own failure as a political party.
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It could be quite some time.

"Lord Mandelson, a cabinet minister during the New Labour era and former Hartlepool MP, says "The two Cs - Covid and Corbyn" were the main factors in the party's defeat in the constituency."

And:

Labour's shadow local government secretary Steve Reed says the result is "absolutely shattering" to Hartlepool, where he thinks the Brexit Party vote from 2019 election "collapsed towards the Conservatives".

He says Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer "never made any bones about the fact we had an electoral mountain to climb" after the party's poor result at that general election.

"It was always going to take more than a year to make this change," he tells BBC News.

But he adds: "People understand we have a new leader, people do not understand that the party has changed, because it frankly hasn't changed enough".

These are from BBC News live updates: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-57016689/
 
Just wanted to check what I missed... where and when did Starmer or Labour publicly despise the voters of Hartlepool? That sounds like it would require Starmer to actually have a position, a personality and balls. Three things which seem to be entirely absent.
 
The Don said:
You're absolutely right, elections are won by not despising voters.

At the moment there is a huge groundswell of right wing populism and the Conservative Party is riding high by pandering to this populism.

If only the Labour Party was willing to pander to these same racists and bigots, make grandiose promises to deliver all kinds of improvements in impoverished areas, demonise sections of the population because of their race, religion, origin or beliefs then they too could be flying high - especially if they had a suitable front man.
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:) :thumbsup:

Though the 'racists and bigots' are also English nationalists and Brexiteers; the Tory pandering to the delusion of Little Englanders and the need to feel special and superior to others is based as much in resurgence of nationalism as pure racial/xenophobia/bigotry.
 
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ISTM that if the voters of Hartlepool want a no-deal or very hard Brexit - and their vote in favour of Brexit, support for the Brexit Party in the last General Election and their support for the Conservative Party in this by-election strongly indicates that - then there's nothing really that the Labour Party could offer them. :confused:

Now there's a broader debate which considers what drives a community like Hartlepool to want that (in apparent contradiction to their best interests) and whether a no-deal or very hard Brexit would be very harmful to them (IMO it would) but IMO that's not something that can be addressed in a by election campaign.
 
Airfix said:
You need to remember how many of these people previously voted Labour, and would again if Labour actually stood for something.
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Labour is standing for something; painful reality.
Labour was, and is, pushing the truths that Britain is not special, that blaming your troubles on brown people/foreigners/immigrants/Brussels/the EU/gays/others is stupid and factually wrong, and that Brexit was disastrously stupid.

However people don't like to have their comfortable bubble of lies disrupted by unpleasant truths.
 
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