•

Center-left in US sees a lesson in British election results

Just a moment...

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/05/center-left-in-us-sees-a-lesson-in-british-election-results-00166686

A center-left group in the U.S. sees a valuable lesson in the landslide victory of Britain’s Labour Party after nearly 15 years in the political wilderness.

The centrist Democrat think tank Third Way argues in a memo obtained Friday by POLITICO that Labour’s sweeping win shows that “centrism wins elections” and can undercut right-wing populism by appealing to the broadest segment of the population with a credible platform.

22 comments

NoneOfUrBusiness

•

This is ridiculous. Nothing changed on Labor's end; the right just split the vote. The lesson is to have incompetent competition.

fmstrat

•

The article is just wrong. Terrible writing.

randon31415

•

Splitting the right = left landslide. Splitting the left = right landslide.

Third way: "Hey, if we split the left, the left will win!"

mumblerfish

•

How is this a broader lesson and not just UK specific? "Center" here I take to mean right, they are saying left parties should move right to become centrist. Where elese has this worked? Swedens socdem has moved right for a long time, and they are barely scraping by. In France, Macron is a center right guy and he is absolutely failing to the far-right.

9point6

•

It's politico, they have a centre-right slant, so of course they think the left should move in their direction

roguetrick

•

I honestly don't think it'll work in the UK either. This election was a win against an undefended goal.

Ensign_Crab

•

The sun came up this morning and centrists took it as an omen that they should move to the right.

roguetrick

•

Now I understand this article is largely ragebait for this community, but I just wanted to point out that the incredible strength of this centrist approach resulted in one of the lowest turnout elections in 20 years with labour receiving about 34% of the popular vote.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement for a consistently winning strategy.

jeffw

•

Turnout was low because people don’t vote when they already know the outcome. The last landslide in the UK also had low turnout.

And while 34% is a few percentage points lower than other recent winners, the more centrist party, lib dems, got more votes than the previous election.

roguetrick

•

And while 34% is a few percentage points lower than other recent winners, the more centrist party, lib dems, got more votes than the previous election.

Sure, but Corbyn's labour got 32.2 and 40.0 compared to this 33.7 "landslide." And Corbyn won his seat even though he's an independent. I don't particularly find the centrist strategy to be a very compelling result compared to that.

ForgotAboutDre

•

The tories lost, Stamer won because tory voters split between Lib Dem’s, Reform and other.

roguetrick

•

You listen to the liberals backing labor's change they'll say it's because labor picked up Tory voters in key races while losing voters in "safe" races while cherry picking results to demonstrate.

I've yet to be convinced of that line of thinking though and I'm much of the same opinion as you. Nobody elects a status quo party when shit is going south like it is right now. The Tories lost because they couldn't help but put up shit policies. The neo-blairites will lose because they kept those shit policies.

ForgotAboutDre

•

Shy tories voted for the Lib Dem’s. The Lib Dem’s aren’t some compromise between left and right. That’s doesn’t really work, it just means everyone dislikes you. The Lib Dem’s get votes when the tories are too socially unacceptable to vote for.

A Tory walks down the street, he encounters a homeless person. He chooses to kick the them, laughing as he walks away. The Lib Dem disgusted by this kicks the homeless person, then walks away quietly.

captainlezbian

•

Oh no. That doesn’t bode well for me being treated as a human being in the long term

Hello_there

•

Biden is basically a centrist and he's hugely unpopular

Peppycito

•

As a non American, my impression of Biden is he's smack dab in the center of the board table, quite far removed from Main St. The Democrats seem the party of corporate America.

distantsounds

•

He’s right of center

cyd

•

The main lesson is "don't be an incumbent".

jeffw

•

Tories have been winning for 14 years despite holding the power prior to elections

9point6

•

And royally fucking the country up unabashedly

We have a mostly right wing press over here and the leftmost publication is the guardian which generally has a liberal-centrist bias. It's taken the Tories getting to insanely ridiculous levels of incompetence for the general public to finally cotton on

hypnoton

•

The main lesson is "don't be an incumbent".

Don't be an incumbent when people don't like the way things are going.

When people do like the way things are going, yes be an incumbent.

gravitas_deficiency

•

Our political tribalism seems way worse than the UK though, and the UK has it pretty bad in that regard.