1. Why Labour Isn't Serious About Winning
2. Keir and Imposing in Hartlepool
3. The Tory Attack on the Right to Protest
4. The Myth of the Vaccine Bounce
5. Why Boris Johnson is Teflon
Honestly didn't see Keir Starmer winning the battle of the rankings this month. And by didn't, I mean did. When I wrote last June about how attacks on the left would do for the Labour leadership, I wasn't quite prepared for how low they would go in the polls. But now at 32% according to YouGov, which was where Labour was in December 2019 and, as Tom Mills has noted, without any negative pressure coming from the British media, the new leadership are failing entirely on their terms. Fitting then that the piece on the Labour right's structural predisposition toward losing tops out the month. The rest? The leaked letter showing collusion between leading officers of Hartlepool CLP and the leader's office to parachute in 'Saudi' Paul Williams did well, as did the more considered piece on Tory invulnerability, the rubbish written about why Keir Starmer isn't getting traction, and why attacks on Boris Johnson simply slide off him. To which you can add recent "revelations" about his affair with and public money bungs to Jennifer Arcuri.
What deserves a second look this April Fool's Day? No capering here. Let's carry on with the theme of knowing one's enemy and look at how the Tories' clever, but traditional appeal to a form of negative class consciousness helps shore up their voter coalition. We have to do this spadework because the Labour leadership and its officially sanctified brain trusts won't.
And next month? I'm hoping to make a few changes around these parts, changes that are going to involve more longer pieces that aren't just your day-to-day commentary, as important as that is.
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1 comment:
«as Tom Mills has noted, without any negative pressure coming from the British media»
My usual claim here is that most media move few votes, because their marketing and political strategy is to preach to the choir. Anti-Labour media are for people who are already anti-Labour.
There are two important qualifications: the BBC has a much less self-selecting audience (even if I think nowadays oldies are much overrepresented), and while the other media move few votes, they may help to turn more people to vote, which can be useful in marginal constituencies, even if the total numbers seem small.
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