I don’t think it was Corbyn. Or at least, it wasn’t all about Corbyn.
Leaders of political parties in parliamentary systems have a big role to play. But the largest role they have is to reflect their party, its values and its direction of travel.
Admittedly, leaders face a more presidential media lens, but I would argue that this is part of a system where the leader becomes the human face of the wider party.
They are influenced by and have the ability to influence fundamental structures like the internal leadership of a party, selections, policy direction and so on, but it is usually symptomatic of a wider shift. Leaders are only installed because they could command support in the first place, they are a symptom rather than a cause of power shifts within a party.
This means that it would be naive to expect a party to change because a leader exits without changing the wider structures that are reflected by the leadership
Recent polling that has come out of the UK Election seems to indicate that the Corbyn factor had something to do with the historic loss for the Labour Party in the 2019 UK election.
I am not contesting that Corbyn was unpopular, or that his personal ratings were not connected to their loss, but I do think that the claims of presidentialisaiton of politics miss that this is a process that unifies the brand of a leader with that of their party.
I would argue in Britain, this also went the other way and negativity about Corbyn affected Labour as well as negativity about Labour affecting Corbyn. In essence, the two became the same thing in the eyes of people and Corbyn, as the figurehead became the focus of anger and disillusionment.
What backs this up? Mostly anecdotal reckoning from me but a little bit of taking a lingering view of elections in the UK as well.
First, and perhaps foremost, Corbyn performed well in 2017. He didn’t win, but he dramatically exceeded expectations and turned the unlovable election for Theresa May into a disaster and a hung parliament.
Labour went from mid-twenties in the polls to low forties across the campaign. During this time, Theresa May never lost her lead as preferred Prime Minister.
This indicates that while Corbyn has never been popular, his popularity did not stop people moving away from the Conservatives and to Labour under his leadership in 2017.
What’s more, similar charges against Corbyn’s character were made. Radicalism, associations with hostile regimes, an affinity for listed terror organisations, and antisemitism were all relevant considerations in the media in the 2017 election.
The major difference appears to have been that the Conservative campaign in 2017 did not resonate with the electorate. Not going too much into this, but my hypothesis would be that in an election predicated on Brexit, May ran a more classical Conservative campaign. This was met with scepticism and opened the door to Corbyn’s New Old Labour revolution to become relevant, especially to voters under the age of 35.
These voters stayed with Corbyn in 2019, in fact, they are the only two age demographics that voted Labour more often than they voted Conservative.
The people who left Labour in 2019 after voting for them in 2017 were the so-called ‘red wall’ seats in the English Midlands. Coincidently, these seats also tended to vote ‘Leave’ in the 2016 referendum.
This is the second reason I would argue they flipped Conservatives. The lack of clarity of Labour’s Brexit message was met, not just with exasperation but also with anger. Brexit has dominated British politics for years, a deal appears to be on the table and Labour ran a campaign to renegotiation and re-referendum.
This is the big change form 2017, a deal is ready. You don’t have to like it or have read it to appreciate that it symbolises an end to Brexit. The collective desire to see Brexit done seemed to inform the positioning of the Conservative Campaign and even the Liberal Democrats “revoke” campaign. Labour was the party that offered the electorate more discussion on Brexit.
For voters who wanted to leave, voters who voted remain but accepted the referendum result, or even for voters who just wanted an end to the Brexit issue, Labour’s offer would have been sub optimal.
So, as a voter, you reject this position. You reject the party that offered it and you seek someone to blame for it. Enter Corbyn, a leader who is already comparatively less likeable to the current Prime Minister and who is leading a party who refuses to accept your democratic will.
It becomes easy to assign blame here where a voter did not do this in 2017. This opens to the or to the acknowledgement of the other deficiencies being put forward by Corbyn’s opponents and allows him to be transformed into the problem when in 2017 the same voter was willing to endorse him as Prime Minister despite these deficiencies.
The final thing in 2019 that becomes different is that the offer from the Conservatives (and form the SNP in Scotland) resonates not only in terms of the threshold issue of Brexit, but to a number of other core issues.
The Conservatives are pivoting to the NHS and to more police, they have lines on the environment and immigration. These are all essential signals to an electorate that they have a plan (the detail becomes secondary to the position) for a post-Brexit world.
In contrast, Corbyn tells the electorate that he has a radical plan to transform Britain, and polls indicate that many of these policies would be accepted. The issue of Brexit though remains a ball and chain around the party.
It wasn’t by chance that the main attack line on the Labour Party was their Brexit position. It was the issue of the election. The other issues were only relevant once that issue had been resolved in the mind of voters.
Labour could not do that and Corbyn will be the one who is to blame (with some good reason as leader), but it would not be right to blame the leader entirely. The whole party, its leadership, and its approach to the electorate are responsible.
People knew who Corbyn was before 2019, they knew him in 2017. The thing that changed was the prevalence of Brexit.
