New Labour Mythology

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...

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.

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

These are the absolute numbers of votes cast at each election for Labour since 1997. Some of the new mythology being spun by Blairites is that choosing a socialist leader was a disaster. But when you look at actual votes cast, this dangerous leftie Corbyn did better than  most of the elections under New Labour. 1. Note that in 2017, Corbyn got more votes than Blair, Brown or Miliband did in 2001,2005, 2010 and 2015. He got close to Blair's vote in 1997 (which was the peak of Blair's popularity - at a time when the Tory popularity was so low that a muppet ould have defeated the Tories). 2. Even in the 'disaster' of 2019, Corbyn got more votes than Miliband, Brown and Blair in 2005.

Much of the Blair mythology is built around seats won. The problem with that methodology is that it is highly misleading as to the actual popularity of a party. It also can disguise what is going on behind the scenes. If you look at vote share (blue bars), we see that there was a steady decline  in the Labour share, starting in 1997 and continuing to 2015. But since in the first 3 of those elections, Labour continued to get a majority in seats , that obfucated the fact it was getting steadily unpopular. In a First Past the Post system, seat share is rarely an indicator of vote share. FPtP consistently delivers anti-democratic results, giving minority parties a majority of seats. It also is often down to potluck. Compare the vote share in 2001 (under Blair) and 2017 (under Corbyn). Labour got the exact same vote share in both cases. But in 2001 Blair got a majority of seats. In 2019, Corbyn got the same vote share but a minority of seats.

How Labour collapsed during European elections under the Blair leadership.

How Corbyn's leadership reversed the terminal death spiral that the UK Labour party was in. Note how the Labour Party was tracking the collapse in social democratic parties across Europe, until Corbyn. UK Labour alone reversed its fortunes.

Collapse of '3rd way' politics, also known as Blairism. Starting with Blair and Clinton, 'Third Way' politics included support for neo-liberal economic policies, neo-con foreign policies and a scattering of mildly progressive social policies. Every party that adopted that 'third way' collapsed; The PS in France, Labour in the UK, The Democrats in the US, POSAK in Greece, PVdA in the Netherlands, the SPD in Germany...