Michael Chessum
Former member of the Momentum steering committee
In the coming days, two Labour tribes will put forward two simple narratives about the election. One will argue that Labour’s mistake was to offer a second referendum. The other will pin the blame squarely on the left – not just on Corbyn, but on Labour’s radical programme. Stuck in the middle will be the party membership, the overwhelming majority of whom are both opposed to Brexit and firmly on the left of Labour.
Both narratives are wrong. In the end Labour did not do enough to persuade people of the policy, but had it failed to back a final say on Brexit, it would have faced oblivion as the Remain vote split even more evenly with the Lib Dems. And while Labour’s manifesto might have been inadequately communicated, its headline policies were overwhelmingly popular. Without either, Labour would never have been able to inspire the biggest ground operation in British political history.
Jeremy Corbyn will now face a whirlwind of recrimination, and it is undeniable he was unpopular on the doorstep. But the truth is he found Labour a rightwardly drifting shell and will leave it a mass movement that could yet transform Britain. As an internally unifying figure with a democratic mandate, there is no reason why he, or someone he appoints, should not stay to ensure an orderly transition.
Corbyn’s mistakes came when he held back. On issues like immigration and party reform, he was forced to balance the radicalism of the mass movement with the conservatism of key institutional allies like Len McCluskey. On the crucial issue of the day, Brexit, Labour’s strategy was a protracted series of handbrake turns and triangulations, not principled stands. The result is, for now, both Remainers and Corbynites have lost. To win again, they will need each other.
MPs Lucy Powell and Shabana Mahmood
Members of Labour Together
Labour candidates and activists worked hard in all weathers, to try to achieve a transformative Labour government with energy, enthusiasm and dedication. We promised real, radical change that we thought the country needed, but it’s clear our offer to the electorate was resoundingly rejected.
We don’t pretend to have all the answers as to why we lost, but we campaigned across the north and the Midlands, and understand the challenges we faced in our heartland and marginal seats. Our starting point for a Labour recovery can’t be to pick the things we like and blame the things we don’t. Some want to say our defeat was all about Jeremy Corbyn; others that it was only Brexit. Both are wrong. Our losses were about both and much, much more.
We must now undertake a real, meaningful review with everything on the table, and no no-go areas. It must start from a place of humility which acknowledges Labour got it wrong rather than the voters, with a process that involves the whole of our movement, and those who feel we’ve left them behind. There’s no quick fix. Nor would a quick leadership election defined by the same factional infighting that’s plagued us for the past three years move us forward. It would probably do the opposite. Whether you’re the leader, an MP, a defeated candidate or a party member, we’ve all got a lot to face up to here. It’s not easy but every one of us must face truths we’ve been ducking, accept our preferred path isn’t working or that we’ve lost touch with those we think we are in politics to help and represent.
Until we collectively go through this reconciliation and contrition together, we can’t start the long road back to winning elections again.
Stephen Doughty
Labour and Cooperative MP for Cardiff South and Penarth
Hundreds of thousands of Labour activists put their hearts and souls into trying to stop Boris Johnson and offer a new direction – and the sense of despair and outright fear of what the Tories might do now is stark.
In the face of such a huge defeat, the only response must be humility, honesty and utterly frank reflection – urgently – on the part of everyone from the leadership down.
Anyone who spoke to former Labour voters on the doorstep knows that the reason for our defeat started first with their views on the leadership – and went well beyond Brexit – into a much wider set of fears about our credibility on everything from national security to spending.
We cannot afford to linger on for months in mourning delusion, or brush the reasons for our defeat under the carpet – we must reorganise swiftly and radically for the sake of those who will need us more than ever to stand up for them in the difficult years ahead.
Peter Kyle
Labour MP for Hove
Brexit isn’t a natural disaster to which we were innocent bystanders. It is a political crisis that brutally exposed the failings of our party leadership. Policy development was never rooted in the reality of Leave or Remain communities, nor the aspirations and anxieties of Leave or Remain voters.
Hence we landed in the absurd position where Leavers thought we were a Remain party and Remainers thought we were a Leave party. We didn’t get here by accident, we were led here. Similarly, confusion reigned in a plethora of other areas, from our response to Russia’s attack on Salisbury to climate change targets, and voters were watching.
Beyond policy, Brexit shone the brightest of lights on those at the top of our movement and found them constantly warring, incapable of basic managerial competence. New members flocked towards a kinder, gentler politics but were betrayed by a culture of authoritarianism, bullying and organisational incompetence.
If we end the nastiness in our party and root ourselves in the realities of a 21st-century economy, we have a chance.
Labour failed to win more support than the Tories in any socioeconomic group, including the working class. We’re a divided country yearning for a patriotic party that values wealth creation as well as social justice.
Voters also said we needed to look more competent, questioning how a party that can’t manage antisemitism out of its own party could possibly run the Home Office.
We must move forward, fast.
Tom Watson has gone, Jeremy is going, and Len McCluskey must follow. They’ve been waging an ideological and personal war for decades and must now leave others to build a movement fit for the future, rooted in the future, and capable of carrying Labour to power in order to shape the future.
Lisa Nandy
Labour MP for Wigan
We’ve lost touch with the day-to-day lived experience of many of the people we want to represent.
Taken individually, so many of the policies in Labour’s manifesto were popular with the public, but as a package, failed to touch the sides of what people feel is really needed. In my town, Wigan, many people get through the week with less than £1 left at the end of it. There is an overwhelming sense of anxiety and insecurity, with a safety net that feels frayed and weak. People struggle and make real sacrifices and they want things to improve, for them, their children. They want to get on, and to get that support: a hand-up so they can take care of themselves.
Romanticising the struggle deeply offends them, and the message of solidarity is undermined by some policies that make little sense. Nationalising rail is a good, sound policy, but should we have staked so much of our campaign on it when so many towns we lost have no train station and rely on buses anyway? Should we really be rejecting nuclear power when it’s one of the best sources of good jobs outside London? What is the point of a minimum-income guarantee if you have to stack shelves for the rest of your life and want something more, or a big offer on tuition fees if you can’t see a way of getting through college?
If we’re to represent the country, we need to understand it, see it as it really is, not how we might imagine it to be, and to live and experience things as the people we fight for do. We need to understand how we protect and preserve what matters, in communities north and south, towns and cities, Leave and Remain. What holds us together as a movement is our faith in each other, in our communities – as diverse and complex as we know them in reality to be. We have to turn away from a politics that is reductionist and binary which can only push so many people further apart.
