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

 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 lost the entire nation of Scotland. 

Corbyn rescued the party from this death spiral. He broke that downward trend, raising our support by 10% - the highest jump since 1945. 

But then, with New Labour firmly back in control, in the shape of Starmer, we have sunk back to 28%.