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Why context matters. And why Blairites like to ignore it.

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 With the catastrophe created by a return to Blairism by Starmer, there are increasing attempts to rewrite history.  Trick number 1 is to look at Corbyn's results in isolation, without historical context so it looks like this: Looks terrible, doesn't it? Starting at 40% and going down to 32% But lets add a little context, by adding Labour's performance just before and after Corbyn. Now Corbyn doesn't look so bad, does he? To put this into an even wider context, covering the entire period of New Labour, beginning in 1997, we can see that New Labour actually presided over a catastrophic collapse in absolute votes and vote share.  This was not just one fluke election. There is a steady erosion of support over the course of 18 years and four elections! By 2010 Labour had  lost 5 million votes  since 1997 and sunk to  29%  in 2010, (and 30% in 2015). In 2015 we also l ost the entire nation of Scotland .  Corbyn rescued the party from this death spiral....
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How Pinochet crashed the economy

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How Reagan crashed the economy

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How Thatcher crashed the economy

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Centrism - an idea whose time has come?

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Key the gray line is number of seats held by LibDems The  blue line is the percentage vote share of the LibDems The orange line is the absolute votes (in millions) And, just for fun, that other bunch of Centrists, the Independent Group are in red , who went from 0 to 6 seats by splitting from their parties. And just as quickly plummeted to 0 seats, once they were forced to fight and defend their seats. As the elections for the Labour Party hot up to choose Corbyn's successor, there will be enormous pressure from Blairites to 'return to the centre', as the only way to become electable. If you are faced with this bullshit, just ask them to explain this chart: Actual results from the last 7 elections for the LibDems, the archetypal 'centrists'. As we can see, Centrism is the least popular political current in Britain today. Corbyn's red-blooded socialist manifesto got more than 10 million votes, better than 'New Labour' in 2005, 2010, 20...
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The myth of Blairism is built on looking only at seats won. But this chart shows both vote share and the absolute number of votes. As you can see, Blair started hemorrhaging votes as soon as he was elected. 1. Blue line: Under New Labour, vote share plummeted from 43% to 29% by 2010,  recovering slightly in 2015 to just over 30% in 2015 2. Orange line: Absolute votes fell from 13.5 million in 1997 to 8.6 million by 2010. In contrast, in 2017, Corbyn reversed the long term decline of the party, raising vote share to 40% and the absolute votes went up by nearly 4 million to 12.8 million. Even in the 'disaster' of 2019, Labour's vote share went down to 32.7%, BUT this was still better than 2010 and 2015 under New Labour. Our absolute votes went down to 10.2 million BUT still better than New Labour in 2005, 2010 and 2015, and almost equal to Blair's second election in 2001.
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Where did the Labour vote go in 2019?

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In 2017, Labour was committed to respecting the Brexit vote. We won more votes than any 'New Labour' election bar 1997. By 2019, the 'centrists', or 'Blairites' persuaded conference and then Corbyn to ditch that policy in favour of the '2nd referendum' position. THAT is what led to Labour losing 2 million votes compared to 2017. A centrist policy foisted on a socialist leadership. Lesson: don't listen to the centrists! https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/apr/20/second-eu-referendum-only-way-to-beat-farage-says-watson
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