Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
So yeah, Labour needs to move economically rightwards to win an election, but that's simply because we live in a country where the super-rich call all the shots. Any other considerations pale in importance next to that.
I'm not totally convinced of that. Remember that the policies Labour adopted under Corbyn are, for the most part, very popular. I think it's fair to say the national mood has turned against austerity after ten grinding years of it. Nobody actually wants the NHS to go tits up, which is why Matt Hancock keeps going on about how only the Tories can "save" it, in the apparent belief that people might not stop to think for a moment about which party has spent a decade deliberately underfunding and mismanaging it. (A tactic which, sadly, probably is working with some less intelligent voters.)
Now let's say Starmer becomes the next Labour leader, which seems fairly likely. It goes without saying that the Tory press will call any economic plan he puts forward "unworkable", whether it's pure Blairism or copied word-for-word out of The Communist Manifesto, even if it's costed down to the last farthing. But they haven't accused him of contributing to a racist book, endorsing a racist mural or associating with Holocaust deniers, because he hasn't done any of those things. Corbyn has vulnerabilities in this regard which aren't shared by other Labour figures who may put forward economic programmes just as left-wing as anything he did. So there is hope yet in this regard, I think.
Labour did vastly better in that election than anyone would reasonably expect, based upon the media disparity and the impact that had on elections over the previous 25 years. Also, the polls *were* a poor guide to the result in 2017, to the point where everyone was proclaiming that polling was dead.
Hmm, yes and no - I would say that polls can be wrong, but they're never that wrong. I don't think a party led by someone with a public approval rating of -60% has ever won an election. Last month's result could be seen coming from miles off; it was sealed the moment Labour lost in 2017, with Corbyn at the height of his popularity and the Tories at their most divided and vulnerable, with a leader hated by most of her own party, never mind anyone else. That's what makes the recent election so frustrating - that the result, which was inevitable with Corbyn in charge, would almost certainly have been different if Corbyn had been honest with himself after June 2017 about the fact that he was obviously never going to win.
Last point of what has become a rant: it's very easy to make people look foolish on TV, which is part of the reason politics by media is such a shitshow.
Well yes, but as an interviewee, you can certainly make things easier for yourself by not saying foolish things.