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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