Labour’s earned settlement proposal is so bad that Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump would both disagree with it.*
For different reasons, of course.
But
@UKLabour seems to think:
“If we disappoint the far left equally as we disappoint the far right, then we should win the centre, which is where most voters are!”
No, actually, that’s just how you lose all voters.
LOSE.
ALL.
VOTERS.
The centrist doesn’t vote for the centre.
All voters behave the same:
A voter casts their vote for whichever party is actively pushing the issue(s) that particular voter cares the most about, and, crucially, they vote for the party that is pushing those issues the hardest.
By alienating the left wing of your party in an attempt to prevent an uprising on the right, you become the party that is not the first choice of any voter, because there is no longer any issue you are pushing for the hardest.
The sole exception to this is an anti-establishment vote, in which the voter believes that the current dominant party in power must be removed at any cost.
This is the vote that won the 2024 election. It was the anti-Tory vote. It was not a vote for Labour’s centrism or Clinton-inspired triangulation.
And even if it had been a vote for Labour’s centrism, it should be noted that even that would be a vote for a party “to the left” of the Tories.
So why on Earth would Labour then think, “ah yes, now that we have won an election by being the challenging party on the left, we should move to the right, that’s why the people voted for a party to the left of the last dominant party in Parliament, they clearly wanted us to be more right wing!”
It’s a massive, avoidable, embarrassing self-own.
This advice brought to you for free by a cracked American immigrant to Scotland (I love Scotland 🏴)
*it should be noted that there are 100 Labour MPs that actually disagree with the proposals I’m referencing, to various degrees.
The government should listen to them.