Diane Abbott is the MP costing labour more votes than any other MP. She is scary.
Poorly briefed. She should have run her own version of 'strong and stable' instead of blanking, though. Regardless, the effect is the same. I expect the damage control will be worse still.
If PMQs had not made it abundantly clear, Corbyn's staff and comms are dire outside their bubble. It works in internal contests because everyone in the movement sort of think they think they know what the memes mean, and they normally mean whatever they obsess over the most.
However, not to be unkind, they tried some [list of Blairite techniques, after the 'movement' bit started flagging] polling, populism, triangulation, message 'control', leader's image projection, policy blitzes, relaunches and negative ads; but it remains amateurish, and isn't something you can learn on the spot anyway, having banished anyone and everyone who can do it well to the fringes, or just left without a desire to work for Corbyn's project. Hence you get Abbott, among other stalwarts, doing a thousand things and failing live because everyone is human in the end. Some still privately maintain that it's best to just throw this election - an even bigger gamble.
There's some agreement of what Ancient Labour is against; no agreement of how to beat it; little strategy to unify their policy proposals beyond keeping Corbyn in the job; a genuine disregard for power and its structures; little detail. The activists and surrogates involved will be left to fill in the blanks with whatever they feel Labour and Corbyn are about [anti-war; bash the rich; NHS - their last lines of defence, etc]. Yet what does their shared will communicate to the electorate? Anger and confusion. It won't work. For something more visceral, see the Arab Spring: revolt; elation; disaster; shambles to set it right; nobody had had a plan; the army and the power structures came back in. We're getting the softcore version of the same.
Whatever
@Mr Jack thinks of the arithmetic of tactical voting and coalitions, it's about whom you're going to end up with at the top now: Corbyn or May. Put simply: will 30% of soft, materially comfortable and pro-EU Tories swing behind Jeremy and a broad anti-Tory alliance? No. Unlike the headline polling, Jezza's personal leadership ratings have hardly moved against May; they are even worse for the group he needs to win. For the same reason, the progressive coalition is more frayed. Albeit some local collaboration - out of sheer self-preservation and desperation - shall take place regardless of the wishes of the executive high command of all parties, and some people will vote against their self-interest on principle alone, but their numbers are few.
