Why The Labour Party Lost The UK Election

Whichever way you approach the recent UK election, it would be fair to say that the Labour Party experienced a drubbing, resulting in a loss of 60 seats and handing the Conservative Party a large parliamentary majority. There has however been a fierce debate surrounding the reasons for Labour’s defeat, reasons ranging from Brexit, Jeremy Corbyn himself or supposedly racist voters.

This debate has deeply spilt the two main factions of the Labour Party, between moderates and progressives. Blairites vs Corbynistas if you will. Moderates place the blame solely at the feet of Jeremy Corbyn, his supposed anti-semitism and poor electability. Progressives see this defeat as a result of a Brexit backlash with many Leave voters leaving the Labour Party while the Conservative Party had one core message: “Get Brexit Done” which seemingly resonated.

It is fair to suggest that Corbyn’s popularity isn’t exactly soaring, with the mere mention of his name bringing about a whole range of different opinions. I believe it would also be fair to say that Brexit had a sizeable impact on the election.

Should you believe everything said about Jeremy Corbyn on social media, news shows or the papers, this is a man who is supposedly anti-Semitic, a supporter of terrorists, a racist, a spy for Russia and the Czech Republic, a communist and a traitor. With these slanderous claims being blasted on to millions of British televisions and newspapers, is it any wonder people who consume the news this way don’t have a particularly favourable view of Corbyn?

In order to fully understand the reasons behind Labour's poor result, we should delve into each of the 60 seats that Labour lost and its percentage of the Leave vote in the 2016 European Union referendum. Looking at the 60 seats in this fashion paints a rather striking picture, with almost every English seat being in a majority Leave constituency, with a couple of understandable exemptions, such as Kensington, the area of the Grenfell Tower disaster, in which former Tory minister Sam Gyimah, who defected to the Liberal Democrats, split the vote between himself and the Labour Party candidate, resulting in the Conservatives gaining the seat.

The Labour Party were stuck between a rock and a hard place in both England and Scotland. In England, Brexit was dividing the country. Seats like Ashfield having a 70.5% Leave vote, Bolsover (70.4% Leave), Hyndburn (65.8% Leave), Redcar (67.7% Leave), Scunthorpe (68.7% Leave), Stoke-on-Trent North (72.1% Leave) - noticing a pattern yet?

Immediately following the EU Referendum, the Labour Party's stance was to accept the result, accept that the United Kingdom would be leaving the European Union and attempt to get the best deal possible, mainly focusing on protections for migrant and worker rights as opposed to a 'Hard Brexit'. However, as Brexit was a deeply dividing issue, Remainers and anti-Brexit parties such as the Greens and Liberal Democrats demanded that everyone pick a side between Leave and Remain. Jeremy Corbyn and his allies in the party knew leaning too far to one side who result in large swathes of voters leaving the party - if Labour heavily backed Leave, their voters would jump ship to the Greens or Lib Dems and if they heavily backed Remain then their voters would jump ship to the Conservative Party, which is exactly what happened.

Meanwhile in Scotland, a country yearning for a second independence vote and which voted to overwhelmingly remain in the European Union, voted accordingly, with the SNP (Scottish National Party) winning 48 of the 59 Scottish seats on offer, an increase of 13 from the 2017 General Election. The SNP were the only party offering another independence referendum and had the best chance to win all Scottish seats, so many Labour Party voters, myself included, tactically voted for the Scottish National Party in order to keep the Tories out of as many seats as possible.