So, I’ve seen some people suggest that if the potential Conservative/DUP coalition falls apart, Labour will be in a good place to ‘win’ a new election. Sure, they’ll probably gain a few more seats, but if you consider winning to be an outright majority, I don’t think this is likely without change. Before I go any further, I think it’s important to recognise what Corbyn did right. This is well publicised but it’s clear he is a good campaigner and has mobilised a younger vote that weren’t previously engaged in the political process. His campaigning has certainly changed opinions within the Labour membership, the Parliamentary Labour Party and Labour’s voting base, becoming more supportive of his leadership.
Corbyn is showing that he’s bringing a bit more cohesion to the Labour party, but I don’t think that’s enough. Labour won 262 seats which while a good improvement, is far from what is required for a majority and this needs to be recognised. Put simply, galvanising the traditional Labour voting base isn’t enough to win an outright majority for two main reasons:
The topic of Brexit doesn’t fall down party lines. Europe is an issue that has proved difficult for both the Conservative and the Labour parties to deal with as there are inter party divisions. I suspect much of the reason that voters have moved away from smaller parties to a two-party system again is due to the difference in opinion over how the Brexit issue is being handled. This is probably one of the biggest political challenges in the best part of a century. Labour’s approach on Brexit is far from clear, they want to avoid hard Brexit, but the values and principles that any negotiations may take hasn’t been communicated in any detail to the electorate. This is simply too big an issue not to have strong leadership on. Whilst I am strongly opposed to the Conservative stance on Brexit, I do recognise that their offer is pretty clear to everyone.
The other polarising issue is around Labour’s economic policy. It’s clear that for much of Labour’s core case, this is a very popular manifesto. The idea of nationalising certain industries, taxing higher earners, a national investment bank, coupled with student loan abolishment is music to many voters. The problem is, it’s very left of centre and while that will solidify part of the electorate, it alienates much of the centre. For the UK to really have a strong majority it needs to be broadly popular with casual (or swing) conservative voters too, and the economic policy simply doesn’t seem fiscally responsible enough for these voters to vote labour. This needs to be toned down to not seem like a risky move for Conservative voters who don’t like certain Conservative positions, but feel that Labour is too much of a risk for the country at such a critical time. Simply by taking a more measured approach, support will come from a broader composition of the electorate. That's not to say that Labour shouldn't be anti-austerity, just that the public need confidence that the policies have been costed and how they are going to be fiscally responsible.
Finally, and a bit tangentially, we’re only in the position of wanting majorities due to FPTP and a more to PR would significantly change the rules of UK politics. I don’t see this happening any times soon and even if a referendum on PR happened (and the actual system was agreed) I don’t have much confidence the public would vote for it.
