Thread by @TheCosmosUK1

1/ Thread on why #Labour is on course to lose and what it's current trajectory and strategy suggests for its future:

It's tiny lead is declining, suggesting, as many of us have explained previously, support is soft. The softness of #Labour support is a feature of "strategy"...

https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1487516193405681667

2/ #Starmer wants to win over former #Tory voters alienated by #Johnson's more than usually explicit corruption. As #Corbyn was aware (and demonstrated more effectively than Miliband and Brown) , winning an election requires expanding #Labour's supporter base...

3/ But this isn't what #Starmer is doing. His strategy seems to be based more on out of date 1990s dogma than actual electoral politics. It assumes that swing voters won't be attracted to #Labour if they percieve it to be "too left wing"...

4/ ... Hence the purging of socialists, for which the rationale is twofold:
1/ Tory "don't knows" are more likely to vote for a less left wing Party.
2/ Purging socialists removes annoying internal dissent and troublesome talk of democracy.

It’s a crap strategy...

5/ As anyone who has ever canvassed properly will tell you, the best was to determine how someone will vote in the future is how they have voted previously. This means that Tory don't knows are most likely to vote Tory next time. This doesn't mean they should be written off...

6/ It does mean that they alone cannot be relied upon to deliver victory. Now it is worth pointing out that Labour needs to gain considerable numbers of votes if it is to win. This means both holding on to existing #Labour supporters while winning over previous Tory voters.

7/ This may not be easy but it is NECESSARY. #Labour's current strategy is relies on turning existing Labour supporters into "don't knows" in a gamble to secure former Tory votes. #Starmer's Centre right positioning is both dull & incredibly & unnecessarily risky...

8/...Labour needs to attract pretty much all of its traditional supporters AND a lot of former Tory voters with a narrative and campaign strategy that can accommodate both. He is repeating the mistake of #Labour's 2019 Brexit position, this time by accident...

9/ Many familiar with the discussions over whether to adopt a 2nd ref position will know that the argument for doing so was that it would attract large numbers of remainder Tory voters and Lib Dems desperate to stop #Brexit...

10/ Based on dubious polling analysis it was assumed that these converts would be enough to fill the hole left by former #Labour voters who voted leave and who would be alienated by the party adopting an explicitly Remain position. Key voters in Leave seats were taken for granted

11/ As a result #Labour voters in many leave seats did not turn out or voted for Farage's #BREXIT Party in protest. Meanwhile, most Tory and Lib Dem "don't knows" voted Tory and Lib Dem. Dumping existing voters for people unlikely to actually support you is obviously a bad idea.

12/ But this is exactly what #Starmer's strategy entails. It's entirely dependent on Tory self destruction. It's also why he'll probably be lucky to do as well as Kinnock in slightly increasing #Labour's representation in Parliament...

13/ but Kinnock's legacy is not something to aspire to. His leadership resulted in another decade of electoral defeat for #Labour. It was not actually a step in the right direction. And this is an OPTIMISTIC scenario for #Starmer, assuming that he gets lucky...

14/... It's the electoral equivalent of hoping for something to turn up and therefore hardly a strategy at all. Slight improvement is not the only possible outcome. Equally likely is further decline. #Labour is now a hostage to the fortunes of the Tory Party.

15/15 More surprising is that many in #Labour's parliamentary "left" are tacitly or actively accepting this dubious strategy by letting Starmer stay. That said, many of them lobbied for a 2nd ref on similarly dodgy logic. Could they actually think #Starmer's "analysis" is right?