Image: Flickr/ Clair Graubner
Blairism is the sickness infecting Labour. The strategy of triangulation that fueled its electoral success was based on shifting the Party to appeal to wealthier home counties residents through an ideology of progressive individualism, whilst assuming its working class base would have nowhere else to go.
Things did not turn out the way they were supposed to. Since 2001, Labour’s core voters have increasingly just stayed at home. As much was evident again in 2015: voting turnout in northern working class constituencies was generally below those of Tory supporting areas. But, since 2010, those voters have once again come to the ballot box to vote UKIP – who are unafraid to talk the language of class – and the Green Party – who defy the Blairites assessment of the situation to pick up votes in the southern counties on a left-wing platform. Turnout in the former Labour heartlands of Scotland bucked the trend, as voters were finally coaxed back into action by the SNP’s leftwards anti-austerity pitch. Blairism waged war on the Labour Party’s own base in order to attract Tory voters. Now it is reaping what it sowed.
