Explanations for Labour Party Defeat

by Les May

TONY Blair is an inspiration to all us aspiring millionaires.

According to that nice Mr Blair's piece for The Guardian the reasons Labour lost the election were '… because it was considered anti-business and too left; because people feared Ed in Downing Street with SNP support; and because he didn’t have a credible deficit reduction plan. They didn’t vote Tory because they thought he was “austerity-lite” but on the contrary because he didn’t seem committed enough to tough economic decisions'.

This may be the view of the pundits and the political nerds but I really do not see voters standing in the ballot box chewing the end of their pencil and pondering about Labour being 'anti-business' or whether its deficit reduction plan was 'credible'.

The recently published Ipsos-Mori study shows that people tended to vote in ways that reflected how well off they felt they were. Home owners and those with morgages tended to vote Tory, those in social or privately rented housing tended to vote Labour. The same trend could be seen in voting by different social classes. Better off people in higher status jobs tended to vote Tory. Less well off people in low status jobs tended to vote Labour as did non-white voters. So no surprises there!

Younger people in the 18-24 age group, lower status and non-white voters  were more likely to vote Labour, but were less likely to vote overall. This suggests to me that Labour would do well to target these groups and persuade them first to register to vote and then actually take part in the election.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/29/tony-blair-labour-leadership-jeremy-corbyn
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/commentisfree/picture/2015/aug/30/tony-blair-jeremy-corbyn-labour-leadership-contest-cartoon

https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3575/How-Britain-voted-in-2015.aspx?view=wide
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/330000-for-a-20minute-speech-at-a-world-hunger-event-tony-blair-is-an-inspiration-to-us-all-10289764.html