this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2024
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A center-left group in the U.S. sees a valuable lesson in the landslide victory of Britain’s Labour Party after nearly 15 years in the political wilderness.

The centrist Democrat think tank Third Way argues in a memo obtained Friday by POLITICO that Labour’s sweeping win shows that “centrism wins elections” and can undercut right-wing populism by appealing to the broadest segment of the population with a credible platform.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 5 months ago (1 children)

This is ridiculous. Nothing changed on Labor's end; the right just split the vote. The lesson is to have incompetent competition.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

The article is just wrong. Terrible writing.

[–] randon31415 26 points 5 months ago

Splitting the right = left landslide. Splitting the left = right landslide.

Third way: "Hey, if we split the left, the left will win!"

[–] mumblerfish 22 points 5 months ago (2 children)

How is this a broader lesson and not just UK specific? "Center" here I take to mean right, they are saying left parties should move right to become centrist. Where elese has this worked? Swedens socdem has moved right for a long time, and they are barely scraping by. In France, Macron is a center right guy and he is absolutely failing to the far-right.

[–] 9point6 15 points 5 months ago

It's politico, they have a centre-right slant, so of course they think the left should move in their direction

[–] roguetrick 13 points 5 months ago

I honestly don't think it'll work in the UK either. This election was a win against an undefended goal.

[–] Ensign_Crab 15 points 5 months ago

The sun came up this morning and centrists took it as an omen that they should move to the right.

[–] roguetrick 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Now I understand this article is largely ragebait for this community, but I just wanted to point out that the incredible strength of this centrist approach resulted in one of the lowest turnout elections in 20 years with labour receiving about 34% of the popular vote.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement for a consistently winning strategy.

[–] jeffw 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Turnout was low because people don’t vote when they already know the outcome. The last landslide in the UK also had low turnout.

And while 34% is a few percentage points lower than other recent winners, the more centrist party, lib dems, got more votes than the previous election.

[–] roguetrick 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

And while 34% is a few percentage points lower than other recent winners, the more centrist party, lib dems, got more votes than the previous election.

Sure, but Corbyn's labour got 32.2 and 40.0 compared to this 33.7 "landslide." And Corbyn won his seat even though he's an independent. I don't particularly find the centrist strategy to be a very compelling result compared to that.

[–] ForgotAboutDre 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The tories lost, Stamer won because tory voters split between Lib Dem’s, Reform and other.

[–] roguetrick 4 points 5 months ago

You listen to the liberals backing labor's change they'll say it's because labor picked up Tory voters in key races while losing voters in "safe" races while cherry picking results to demonstrate.

I've yet to be convinced of that line of thinking though and I'm much of the same opinion as you. Nobody elects a status quo party when shit is going south like it is right now. The Tories lost because they couldn't help but put up shit policies. The neo-blairites will lose because they kept those shit policies.

[–] ForgotAboutDre 5 points 5 months ago

Shy tories voted for the Lib Dem’s. The Lib Dem’s aren’t some compromise between left and right. That’s doesn’t really work, it just means everyone dislikes you. The Lib Dem’s get votes when the tories are too socially unacceptable to vote for.

A Tory walks down the street, he encounters a homeless person. He chooses to kick the them, laughing as he walks away. The Lib Dem disgusted by this kicks the homeless person, then walks away quietly.

[–] captainlezbian 11 points 5 months ago

Oh no. That doesn’t bode well for me being treated as a human being in the long term

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Biden is basically a centrist and he's hugely unpopular

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

As a non American, my impression of Biden is he's smack dab in the center of the board table, quite far removed from Main St. The Democrats seem the party of corporate America.

[–] distantsounds 2 points 5 months ago

He’s right of center

[–] cyd 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

The main lesson is "don't be an incumbent".

[–] jeffw 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Tories have been winning for 14 years despite holding the power prior to elections

[–] 9point6 8 points 5 months ago

And royally fucking the country up unabashedly

We have a mostly right wing press over here and the leftmost publication is the guardian which generally has a liberal-centrist bias. It's taken the Tories getting to insanely ridiculous levels of incompetence for the general public to finally cotton on

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

The main lesson is "don't be an incumbent".

Don't be an incumbent when people don't like the way things are going.

When people do like the way things are going, yes be an incumbent.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Our political tribalism seems way worse than the UK though, and the UK has it pretty bad in that regard.