The reason given by most 2017 Labour voters for deserting the party was not its Brexit policy, or its overall platform, but the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. In the first article of this series, I looked at how Labour’s voter coalition fell apart between 2017 and 2019. Over the course of the next few contributions, I will consider why this happened and what lessons we can draw from it. In the third and fourth, I will look at the question of Labour’s campaign messaging and the tremendous difficulties created by the Brexit issue for Labour. But here I will consider the basic question of Labour’s leadership.
It has already become a cliché, reported by thousands who canvassed for Labour during the election, that the reasons given for disliking Corbyn included both specific issues obsessively promoted by the right-wing press, and a general sense that Corbyn appeared weak, indecisive and unaggressive: normally, it seems, voters would give one of these two sets of reasons rather than the other. The first was usually justified with reference to Corbyn’s supposed historic sympathy for the IRA or his ‘excessive’ sympathy with Muslims. The latter was more generally framed in terms of Corbyn lacking charisma, energy and fighting spirit.
