Thread by @forwardnotback

The morning after the night before
East Devon I guess the mountain was to high to climb and some would say that was the message of the whole election but they would be wrong - Labour didn’t try to climb the mountain we sat around talking about how mountains could be different

It was a disaster for @UKLabour and all those involved at the very top need to take full responsibility
It wasn’t just a Brexit election but the tories has a simply and intoxicating message - get Brexit done and look forward not back

Labour’s message of a new and better country, about the young and how change was coming, we talked about the future BUT in the final week we talked about Thatcher
We talked about bringing communities together but we had destroyed our relationship with the Jewish community

We said we were for the many not the few - but we didn’t really talk about or talk to the many, we demonised the few and perhaps understandably people worried if they were the few
We talked about new industries bit people saw us as being against aspiration

We didn’t like successful people and we told them how they were they problem - we lampooned Richard Branson
Corbyn said “we don’t do personal” but our shadow chancellor and parry chair got personal and people decided we were nasty

Johnson visited hospitals, factories and bakeries
Corbyn visited members and held rallies
We said trust us we will be responsible in government but we spent hours talking about leaked documents - people decided not to trust us

We had some good policies - a national education service, rebuilding Sure Start but we talked about that for a few hours and then moved back to talking about Johnson
We said it wasn’t all about Brexit but then spent five weeks talking about Johnson’s Brexit deal

When people turned on the TV they saw too many shouty men often talking about Thatcher (again) and Labour outriders were seen as sweary and crude
The outcome - we lost some incredibly talented MPs and our parliament will be a worse place without them
But there’s another story

About campaigning, engagement and politics
If you spend 3 years telling people how stupid they are, how they don’t understand the issues, how their concerns are based on lies, how they need to shut up, eventually they won’t hear anything you say and they see you as the problem

You can have the best memes, you can produce great videos, you can hold great rallies but if only your friends attend them it is all a bit pointless and you won’t get a bigger audience or make new friends

And the we need to talk about ‘Johnson’ that is an awful politician, a person with a distant relationship with the truth is undoubtedly true but my guess is that all the electorate saw was “everyone against Johnson”
Tactical voting sites, pundits and activists screamed at people

The screamed forget what you believe in, throw away your principles, hold your nose and vote for the person who can beat Johnson
But they couldn’t agree who was best placed to beat Johnson - but they loved telling voters what to do
Don’t vote for anything but vote against HIM

My guess all the electorate heard was people lecturing them, people telling them what to do but most of all and this probably sounds odd, they saw “one man against the rest”
And they close the one man - maybe they saw it as bullying, maybe they saw it as, Farage once said ...

It is “US against THEM” we managed to turn one of the most privileged politicians of our age into a rebel
Think about that for a minute and then move back to Labour

If Labour weren’t attacking Corbyn we were attacking the media
If we weren’t denying antisemitism we were blaming the Jews
And when we aren’t talking about high speed broadband and hope we were talking and gloom and despair and Thatcher
If that didn’t work we attacked Blair

But remember this: we had thousands of activists on the street
We were fed stories that IDS, Raab and Johnson himself were going to lose their seats - get to Esher, jump on the train to Walton was the cry - meanwhile back in the real world voters in Burnley

Voters is Workington and Leigh were getting on with their lives and of course for many, for the first time that didn’t include voting Labour

This wasn’t simply a rejection of a manifesto that was too long
It wasn’t that people didn’t understand our message
It wasn’t that Laura Kuenssberg was on the telly
The cold, hard truth is that the electorate saw us, they heard us they simply didn’t like what they saw or heard

This defeat was created in the last five weeks, it wasn’t a last minute change of mind
You can have the best product in the world but people won’t buy it if they don’t trust salesman and that brings us to Corbyn - as a brand he is damaged goods, too many voters don’t trust him

And perhaps they never will
But it isn’t just about Corbyn, Labour now faces a long and very difficult period, a period of political irrelevance and the choice is clear
We can continue with a project that enthuses the few or build a new politics that appeals to the many

My fear is that we will make the wrong choice
I’ve gone from anger, to heartbreak and back to anger and now I’m going to the cafe, hopefully I will find a conversation or two or maybe that old woman in the old blue coat will look at me and tell me it’s going to be ok

Be nice to each otherand don’t hate the people of Leigh, Burnley or Wakefield - we are to blame not them abs we need them to help us get out of this mess
Later I’ll go to the zoo and talk to the penguins - they are going to be really pissed off when I tell them what’s happened