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The pernicious power of two pervasive, persistent mythical narratives:
1. "Working class" (actually, low education, socially conservative) Leavers are only group Lab needs to worry about
2. Fate of US Democrats holds lessons for British left
1. "Working class" (actually, low education, socially conservative) Leavers are only group Lab needs to worry about
2. Fate of US Democrats holds lessons for British left
The firsts leans on the "Leave seats=leave votes" error which I have discussed many times. The second is an older error (and, ironically, another point of continuity with pre-Corbyn Labour). US politics is just too different to UK politics for lessons to be drawn from Dems.
Aside from that, the "look at how the Dems lost" narrative ignores the fact that Dems won (1) a majority of the popular vote in 2016 and (2) a substantial majority in the House of Reps in 2018 (nearest analogy to the House of Commons, if we are going to play this game)
They won that majority in the House of Reps because socially liberal suburban white graduates defected from Republicans to Dems en masse due to dislike of Trumpism. The nearest analogy to that group in British politics would be...Conservative Remainers hacked off w/hard Brexit.
So I'd end by repeating a point that I have made many times, but which bears repeating: Con Remainers are as numerous as Lab Leavers. And they have much more reason to be hacked off with their traditional party. So why do we never talk about them?
