And for Sadiq Khan. Three things to remember -
1) The Mayor of London virtually always has high ratings
2) don't fall into the "Centrism = more electable" fallacy. In the last election, both the Tories and Labour increased their support precisely by driving away from the centre. Like I said, narrative outweighs policy.
3) He is vey much a guy who is a great fit for Cosmopolitan, Liberal London; but a terrible fit for the rest of the country (and I don't mean "because he is a Muslim", but more because he is so pro-multiculturalism, and so willing to embrace diversity - which is somewhat otu of fashion outside the big cities).
Agree on the first one. Disagree on the 2nd as Sadiq isn't a centrist; he's still relatively on the soft left of Labour.
Very much disagree about the last one; I don't see how he's 'pro-multiculturalism' anymore so than any other Labour MP (besides the resident cranks) Besides he's a muslim who was raised in a council flat by his Dad who was a bus driver.
Sure his views on the EU are probably a bit too remainy for a lot of the country but I don't think people who voted for Jeremy Corbyn are suddenly going to say 'oh wait Sadiq is too metropolitan'.
I think it is questionable that May was more right wing than David Cameron. Maybe on Brexit, immigration and social issues although she did vote in favour of gay marriage. On economic issues she seemed more centrist as she favours a living wage, refused to ruled out raising taxes for the rich although unlike Corbyn it would be a last resort, talked about doing more on reducing inequality."
I think that underlines parochial boy's point that it's futile to try to pigeonhole people/parties/countries into discrete ideological groups. Is May 'left wing' because she's adopted Labour-inspired economic policies? Are the people who voted UKIP in 2015 and Labour in 2017 (as about 1/3 of erstwhile UKIP supporters did) now 'left wing'? Is the UK as a whole more 'right wing' than Canada because of Brexit or because Canada has allegedly shifted to the left? I'd say the answer to all these is 'no' because the categories of 'left wing and 'right wing' are just too clumsy and imprecise to accurately describe the political situation at the moment.
Objectively May is to the right of Cameron; on devolution, immigration, brexit, fox hunting etc. Her relatively stale interventionism (e.g energy caps) on the Economy has only slightly shifted the party; she went into an election basically keeping all of the cuts that Osborne put forward, and didn't even try and change it
Never mind there were many constituencies Blair won where Corbyn was not competitive such as along the Channel line in Kent which went for Blair as recently as 2005 but Corbyn lost by 20 points or much of Staffordshire which Blair dominated but Corbyn lost badly. In many ways Labour has the same problem as the Democrats in the US, they are running up the margins in the big cities, but struggling in the hinterlands.
This is partly true; and was very much what happened in 2015; but Labour actually won suburban seats like Enfield Southgate which IIRC we lost in 2005, and there are a fair few seats similar to that. I wouldn't put our problems quite as bad as the democrats; since there's clearly areas for Labour to get a majority in the next election (pick up seats in Scotland, hoover up M25 London seats, pick up close marginals like Hasting)
I agree Labour has a problem in it's traditional ex-industrial seats like Copeland; but I don't see any Labour leader who could fix that
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