Thread by @shaunjlawson

I'm seeing quite a few people making the argument that this defeat is all Labour Remainers' fault - because Labour soft Brexit in 2017 achieved what it did.

Sorry: it's nothing like that simple.

1. Oppositions don't win elections. Governments lose them. In 2017, Labour were up against a much weaker opponent, palpably uncomfortable in her own skin, whose campaign became a national laughing stock which even the media highlighted. Yet even then, the Tories still got 42%.

2. At the 2017 GE, Brexit wasn't even discussed. Everyone accepted we were leaving. It was a different world in that sense.

By contrast, 2019 was the Brexit election because Johnson forcefully made it so.

3. Before the 2017 GE, the Labour right were nothing like as vicious or nasty in their treatment of Corbyn... because they assumed he'd be hammered. It's the prospect of him actually winning which created so many disgusting attacks since then. Meaning:

4. Since late 2017/early 2018, and especially since around March or so this year, Corbyn has cut a steadily diminished figure. He's just not been as effective as he once was. Why? The constant barrage of abuse took its toll... as it would on any decent human being.

5. Whereas the media spent the 2017 GE campaign ridiculing May (mostly because they assumed Corbyn had no chance), ever since, it's been all hands on deck from them. A campaign of lies, misinformation and hysteria which worked. As it was always likely to.

The media has now destroyed the last three Labour leaders; six out of the last eight Labour leaders; and the seventh, John Smith, passed away before they'd have tried to destroy him too. The only leader they didn't destroy was the one who licked their backsides.

6. As a result of all of this, this campaign just didn't cut through in anything like the way 2017 did. That was palpable throughout. Compounding this was a manifesto which was literally too good to be true: it basically had too much of everything.

I thought it was wonderful - but I'll never pretend to be in the median of the British electorate. Above all, the suspicion among far too many was: "This seems too good to be true. How can it possibly all be paid for?"

7. I've said this before and I'll say it again. What was the biggest complaint about Blair? That he didn't represent Labour values. That members were expected to support things which they, rightly, didn't believe in. At all.

Well: that is EXACTLY what Labour Leavers have demanded of Labour Remainers, who make up the substantial majority of the membership. Expecting people to campaign, volunteer, give up their time, make sacrifices for something they don't believe in and know is wrong just isn't on.

Brexit is an era-defining issue of generational consequences: for young people more than anyone else. Corbyn has appealed to young people more than any other group. So the young would've come out in their droves for a Leave-supporting party? Do me a favour.

More than that: when something is just the fundamentally wrong thing to do because of the harm it will cause and the criminality surrounding its approval, backing it for electoral expediency is the wrong, unprincipled thing to do. Just as it was under Blair with Iraq.

8. Browsing through YouGov's MRP on Tuesday night, what leapt out at me was something truly horrifying. Namely: it is quite literally impossible for any Labour Party led by anyone to win a majority now. At all.

Scotland is gone. It's very likely gone forever. Scottish Labour, just like the Scottish Lib Dems, keep parroting total, tin-eared drivel about the SNP and 'narrow nationalism' which gets them precisely nowhere. And deserves to get them nowhere too.

As for the north and the midlands (targeted, I've no doubt, with dark Facebook ads: remember that figure of 88% of Tory ads being misleading?) - the cultural divide in the UK is such that Labour cannot possibly succeed both there and in metropolitan cities.

I found the numbers across Labour's traditional heartlands quite staggering, even before the results came in. And the kind of people Labour appeal to now mean this gap will only get worse.

Educated professionals / working class

Multi-ethnic / white

Socially liberal / socially conservative

Young / old

Cities / market towns

Remainers / Leavers

Nobody could keep such a coalition together. No-one.

9. When you then add the quite disgraceful, idiotic behaviour of the Lib Dems and even the Greens, handing marginal seat after marginal seat to the Hard Brexit Tories, you reach a very stark conclusion. It does not matter who the Labour leader is. Labour cannot win under FPTP.

We only forced a hung Parliament - and only just - by everything going right for us, everything going wrong for the Tories in 2017. And even then, we only got 262 seats; and even then, the north and the midlands were teetering on the edge.

Under FPTP, we'd essentially already maxed out all the gains we were ever going to make in the cities. Now the boundaries are going to be redrawn and rigged even more in the Tories' favour. Along with voter ID too.

Remember too that in 2017, UKIP were a rudderless shambles. While the Brexit Party's share of the vote was low, Farage knew exactly what he was doing: taking Labour votes from one flank while the Lib Dems did from another.

What this all means is very simple. There is no chance of any progressive government ever having the chance to remake the UK unless all progressive parties join together for one election against the Tories. One anti-Tory candidate in each seat.

That progressive alliance would implement PR if elected: thereby bringing the Lib Dems and Greens on board. And it would offer a second Scottish referendum: thereby bringing the SNP on board. And it would offer real constitutional reform and devolution too.

Notice how many chastened Labour politicians spoke of how working class people believe that Labour doesn't understand their lives, at all? Well of course they don't - because Labour MPs are stuck in Westminster hundreds of bloody miles away.

Our chronically centralised system was designed for the nineteenth century, not the twenty-first century. Power has to be put into people's hands at LOCAL LEVEL. And only that can re-establish bonds and connections between them and their local representatives.

Sadly, I don't think a single Labour leadership candidate will propose anything like this. Though I know @labourlewis supports the idea, at least.

@labourlewis Our electoral system is killing the Labour Party, killing progressive politics and leading to ruinous policy which literally kills. And the only way to change that system to something actually democratic and fair is via the proposal I've made.

@labourlewis That is how you unite the centre and the left. That is how you appeal to people through both their heads and their hearts. That is how you create long term, fundamental change. And of course, once PR was implemented, all the parties could go back to being themselves again.

@labourlewis It's the only way, folks. I thought as much in 2015 and I think it just as much now. The squeeze which started then is now gathering pace. If we don't reach out and offer a progressive alliance, the vice will tighten even further... with catastrophic consequences for everyone.