It’s not enough to blame Jeremy Corbyn, Brexit or the media. The picture is far more complex than that
• Full election results here
This changes everything. The fourth national vote in four years has broken the parliamentary logjam with devastating effect. It was a rout. Labour’s vote in its traditional strongholds finally collapsed. The demographic, geographic and social ties that bound its coalition together have unravelled. We have yet to see if they can be put back together again. Britain has elected the most rightwing government for decades, handing the least principled leader in living memory such a massive majority that it could take a decade to get rid of him. Last night was bad. The worst is yet to come.
The left must now find the space to grieve and think simultaneously. Because it’s not about us. It’s about the more hopeful society we want to create, the people we want to create it with, and the dystopia that the Tories are in the process of creating. And we won’t be in a position to win again until we work out why we lost. The easiest answers here are also the least adequate. To blame it all on Jeremy Corbyn, Brexit, the media, the manifesto or a failure of tactical voting is to deny a bigger, more complex picture. Of course Brexit played a significant role. Labour had three years to come up with a coherent offer to counter Tory bluster and failed. Given that its biggest losses were in leave areas, the notion that it should have cast itself as an unequivocal party of remain and a second referendum makes no sense. That certainly didn’t do the Liberal Democrats any good.
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