The 2010s have proven to be a decade of sorrow for the Labour Party. Following the Tories ascendancy to government amid 13 years as the Opposition, Labour have been incapable of overtaking the preeminence of the Conservatives monopoly of government, despite the chance to do so through four general elections!
So this begs the question, why has Britain remained predominantly blue and what has held Labour back from the success it experienced throughout the late 90s and early 00s?
On our Instagram page @politicsbloguk, we asked for what peoples opinions were on why the Labour Party have failed to form a government in the Commons. As expected, a significant amount of comments made reference to Labour's weak party leadership as the primary reason for their lack of electoral success. In the run up to the 2010 election, Gordon Brown was slammed by voters for failing to secure his own personal mandate by calling an election after succeeding Tony Blair as Prime Minister in 2007. This in conjunction with his inability to competently tackle the ensuing recession as a result of the financial crisis meant his potential reputation as a strong leader could never be acquired. Similarly, Lord Goldsmith, who was Attorney General during the Blair government, openly criticised Brown's replacement, Ed Miliband, as not being able to 'connect with voters' in addition to saying that 'it is not clear what he (Miliband) stands for'.
However, Jeremy Corbyn is undoubtedly the most salient example of a weak Labour leader in the last decade. According to the market research company, Ipsos Mori, Corbyn went in to his 2019 general election campaign with the lowest net satisfaction ratings of any opposition leader in 50 years. The election itself resulted in the one of Labour's worst election results in history, with countless seats that had been red for decades falling to Boris Johnson's Conservative Party
It is however crucial to recognise the role the media has played in projecting a feeble and unappealing image of the Labour party throughout the last four elections. The growing importance of the media, particularly since the wake of the 21st century, has tended to reinforce the electorates impression of leaders and their political parties. In the 2010 election campaign, much was made of Gordon Brown's unscripted meeting with a voter in Rochdale where a radio microphone picked him up describing her as a 'bigoted women'. The incident was seized by the media, who depicted Brown as an insecure, cantankerous workaholic who could not articulate a progressive vision for the nation. For Ed Miliband, the media arguably thwarted his ability to appear in a statesmanlike light to the nation due a photographer capturing him eating a bacon sandwich. The image made him look awkward, error-prone or incapable of performing simple tasks, and was used in a mocking front page of the Sun, the UK's most widely read newspaper, on the day before the 2015 general election.
For Jeremy Corbyn however, it could be argued that the media have relentlessly projected him to be appear antagonistic and incompetent, centering as much on his personality and appearance as on his policies. In 2016, a YouGov survey found that 97% of Corbyn supporters agreed that the "mainstream media as a whole has been deliberately biasing coverage to portray Jeremy Corbyn in a negative manner". In the same year, an analysis by academics at the London School of Economics around the time as the Labour leadership election showed that 75% of eight selected newspapers either distorted or failed to accurately represent Corbyn's actual views on political issues.
A less notable, yet still important factor, is that the Labour Party has yet to regain its image as a united party to the same scale as it was during the Blair years. Tony Blair placed a strong emphasis on strengthening the centre of his cabinet so that they would work in a much more centrally managed agenda. This is attractive to votes, but is also something that recent Labour leaders have struggled to achieve over the past decade. For example, in the recent 2019 general election, the disunity of the Labour party was demonstrated by Labour MP, Ruth Smeeth, who blamed the predicted result on her party leader, postulating: "his personal actions have delivered this result for my constituents and for swathes of the country overnight.”
However, it does not have to be all doom and gloom for Labour supporters. It is clear from our recent 'debate topic' Instagram post, that many are confident that the new leader of the Labour Party, Kier Starmer, is more than capable of forming a Labour government in the next general election. But in order for Starmer and his party to achieve this, he must ensure that he maintains a strong image, an ideologically united party, and most importantly, a positive relationship with the media.
Written by PoliticsBlog UK - Instagram @politicsbloguk
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