The dust is settling on Labour’s catastrophic election defeat, yet the pain does not subside. The aftermath of this defeat feels like the five stages of grief. Unfortunately, this process is not a progressive process that we can pass through … instead it is on a loop, a Groundhog Day that will not pass, each morning beginning with the 10pm exit poll.
I would very much like to impart my usual snippets of trivel and drivia; a laconic take on the banal stupidities of parliament. Alas, I cannot.
Profanity will help – it often does – and if it worked for Hunter S.Thompson, it should work for us all. Hunter witnessed his share of progressive electoral collapses so let’s be clear about what happened to Labour and the country on May 7: it was an absolute fucking disaster.
Denial
If anyone in our party seeks to deny the scale of this defeat, they should seek immediate help. If others also seek to claim that they did not see this defeat coming, they too should check themselves in. This defeat was avoidable. A weak government was there for the taking, yet Labour never shifted the needle. As painful as our defeat has proven to be, anyone on the centre-left feeling surprised should probably leave politics now.
Anger
Ed Miliband is a good man. He ran a good campaign, improving immeasurably as a Leader and a politician during the four week run-in. He gave a warm, emotional resignation speech. As I watched it, I felt emotional.
I snapped out of it quickly. Like Ed, I will be alright. Those left hammered by the Tories, those people who are genuinely suffering won’t be. As Ed finished his speech, I could not think of anything but the constituent who told me days earlier that her partner had taken his life because of the pressures caused by the bedroom tax and changes to his disability support payments.
My sorrow quickly changed to fury – a spitting, snarling fury at our collective failure for those people who needed us to win.
Bargaining
The attempt to seize control in the aftermath of grief. ‘If only we’d sought a second opinion…’
We did. On numerous occasions. The official diagnosis everyone suspected appears to have been purposefully, deliberately hidden. The patient did not respond well.
Depression
Mourning. Sadness. Regret. Despair. Dejection.
By my reckoning, that is a pledge card right there.
Acceptance
The first step on the road to our next victory – and we will win again – is to accept how bad this defeat truly is, and how utterly self-inflicted it was.
The next Labour leader will cast their net far and wide in seeking answers to explain our latest defeat. Time and money could be saved by listening to Will Hutton. Writing in last week’s Observer, he stated that, ‘it is obvious that the Labour party will only win again around a refashioned Blairism’.
Nothing could be clearer. The alternative approach has been tested to literal destruction.
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Jamie Reed MP is member of parliament for Copeland. He writes The Last Word column on Progress and tweets @jreedmp
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Labour’s defeat was no disaster, it was a liberation. A liberation from the big government, high tax, economic/fiscal ineptitude and poisonous identity politics of the British left.
When we remember Labour’s time in power we must remember the patients tortured to death in Mid Staffs and others, the children raped by Labour’s immigrants in Rotherham and other English towns, the Iraqi’s slaughtered in the name of Labour’s ego, the lives ruined as aspiration was trampled and human beings were turned into brain-dead welfare zombies.
Labour is dangerous but with any luck it will ultimately be replaced by a true working class party such as UKIP.
4911 young white victims of muslim rapists spread across 37 English towns and cities. All to buy muslim block votes for Labour.
What’s bad for Labour is good for Britain.
May 7 was a glorious, glorious day.
“A Disaster for the country”.
No, just for you lot.
“Oh, how can we convince people to stop being nasty and vote for us? We’ve promised them free money, and they all dearly love the enrichment we’ve forced on them. Why oh why didn’t they vote for us? It’s a mystery. I know: they must all be racist and confused. That much be it.”
You can watch the BBC’s coverage of the election results on Youtube, all the way from the exit poll to the absolute majority. I’ve watched it twice, with a little judicious fast-forwarding.
I just watch the exit poll announcement. It’s up there with Jonny Wilkinson’s drop goal!
the po faced misery in the morning after on the beeb news made me laugh
We’re going to take your money and use it to pay people not to work. And let millions of people from third-world hellholes into the country. And give them money as well.
it was an absolute fucking disaster.
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Can we do without the swearing. The last refuge of the crap lefty comedian.
If what you have to say is interesting people will read it.
If it’s not interesting no amount of swear words will change that.
And oh yeah,Clueless Ed would have been a disaster.
“As Ed finished his speech, I could not think of anything but the constituent who told me days earlier that her partner had taken his life because of the pressures caused by the bedroom tax and changes to his disability support payments.”
B.S.
If you’re going to get over Miliband and Milibandism, then perhaps you might lose the nauseating self-righteousness and hyperbole that characterises that man’s politics. Suicide support groups and charities have spent the last five years utterly condemning this Labour narrative that in these cases suicide is not caused by depression or other causes, but that suicide is caused purely and simply by terrible evil Tories and their policies, nothing else, and that suicide is inevitable if there’s a Tory Government.
And quite aside from how unhelpful it is to those contemplating suicide, you might consider (and I accept this analysis is a little more cynical) how off-putting it is to the swing voter in the marginal seat – someone almost certainly in private-sector employment with a mortgage and 1.5 kids and a family income of ~£30000 – who sees that benefit claimants can claim a maximum of £26000 a year, yet here is the Labour Party arguing with terrible hyperbole that that cap, or the benefit bill in general, could not possibly be reduced because people would commit suicide otherwise. It is a form of political blackmail applied to the swing voter which backfired terribly when the swing voter saw through it.
I am a Tory and you may believe I’m just offering ‘false flag’ advice, but until you understand this you are out for good. But never mind the political implication, it is the filthy sanctimonious lie that Tories drive people to suicide that I mind the most. If you wonder why Labour suffered from inaccurate polls and the ‘shy Tory factor’, going about saying Tories cause suicides might explain it.
However much Mr Reed you may use swear words (shock! horrors! – it’s not 1965, you’re no Ken Tynan you know) on a blog to try and prove your sincerity, and however much you act as if you’re offering a purge to what lost Labour the election, in reality you’re offering only more of the same.
I know this will sound harsh, but your constituent didn’t just kill himself just because DWP stopped paying for a spare room. Thousands of other factors will have played on his mind. Until you get this you will lose and will deserve to lose.
Not many will disagree with what you have written.
Actually, scrap that.
Not many on the right will disagree. Your comrades will howl and howl at the injustice of it all. And make excuses for why Labour lost. Mad, mental excuses.
Labour were not socialist enough.
Labour did not promise to end austerity
Labour did not get its message of OneNationismism-Predator-producing EdstonePinkbussery-Pricey-freezy across.
As you correctly identified, it was the shambles of the Miliband team Miliband’s blank piece of paper , make it up us you go along, 35%, forget Scotland, Ignore voters concerns over immigration or taxation or benefits culture, union dominated party that cost the election.
And , of course, Ed’s less than impressive performances until the very very end. When it was much too late.
I’m afraid that the previous strategy of preaching to the choir and wrapping the 35% {28% as it turned out..} in labour’s comfiest of comfort blankets – CLASS WAR – means that the faithful will not be impressed by what will appear to be copying the Tories.
Another election defeat beckons before reality finally sinks in.
I had a quick scan of the Will Hutton article mentioned in this piece, but had to stop when Hutton referred to ‘the non-problem of British national debt’.
Trust me, Labour, as one of your former voters who would quite like to be able to vote for you again: deficit denial is NOT the way back to power.
sorry but ed wasnt a good man … he may be a nice man, he may be kind to puppies, he may even pay some of his taxes … but for economic uk he would have been a nightmare. his constant knee jerk, half @rrsed policies would have multiplied if he’d been in power. Just SO much good they could have done if they spend just a few more hundred million … lets increase taxes on those rich b’stards not because it raises revenue but simply to make a point (what do you mean they are all leaving? no loss, we’ll tax everyone else more) … right to the point the uk sank under a mountain of debt .
you got caught out by an electorate that saw through the very poorly disguised, vague words
labour is no longer relevant to the uk. you cant try to promise to run the country simply for the benefit of the unemployed, the civil service, unions and immigrants when the majority no longer trust your vague, never written in stone pronouncements. and youre too late turning to the centre ground … the tories got there first and planted their flag very squarely on that turf.
you have no-where to go and extinction beckons
Oh dear, more self pitying nonsense – is this man really an MP ? If Labour really cared about the poor it would have introduced electoral reform back in 1997 or when Gordon Brown became PM or in the hung Parliament negotiations of 2010 or in their 2015 Manifesto – the fact is that the Labour would rather lose than co-operate with other parties. Blairism is being so Tory that even the Tories can’t tell the difference – it is saying the country is so dreadful vote for us and we won’t change it very much, at least not so you’d notice. It may have worked in 1997 but that was due more to the Tories implosion over black Wednesday, now with UKIP, SNP and Greens, Blairism is dead. You can’t build a big tent which is both more right wing in marginal English seats and more left wing in Scotland. Lets face it in Scotland the Labour party is almost over – the real challengers to the SNP are the Conservatives.
Labour did not just fail to win.
More people did not vote at all than voted for Labour.