Sense of déjà vu for Labour as UK poll looms
A FEMALE prime minister calls an election when the opposition is divided, squabbling over policies and led by an unpopular socialist who’s prompted some lawmakers to jump ship.
That was 1983 during the Margaret Thatcher era, and it’s déjà vu for the Labour Party more than three decades later under another Conservative premier, Theresa May. It didn’t end well for Labour back then as it crashed to its worst electoral defeat since before World War II and took another 14 years to win power.
Opinion polls suggest the party is headed for a similar fate in June, with one former leader not expecting Labour to form a government again in his lifetime.
“It’s hard to see a silver lining for a party going into a general election with a 20-point deficit,” said Anthony Wells, associate director of political research at the polling company YouGov.
“They’re going to suffer very badly, and there’s no way of polishing it up and seeing a bright side.”
History shows it may be too soon to ring the death knell for a party that won three consecutive elections before being unseated in 2010, but the political landscape doesn’t suggest a resurrection anytime soon. Labour’s wounds reflect the backlash that brought Britain its vote to leave the European Union, Donald Trump to the White House and a far-right candidate running a close race for the French presidency.
Led by Jeremy Corbyn, Labour could lose 50 to 100 seats as the election campaign over the next seven weeks lays bare all its divisions, according to Steven Fielding, professor of politics at Nottingham University. It lost 52 seats in 1983, when one Labour lawmaker, Gerald Kaufman, famously called the party’s election manifesto “the longest suicide note in history”.
“This is a high-stakes election, and what will Labour look like?” Fielding said. “Labour will look like a rabble, and that will be an image that will be imprinted on many voters for a number of elections to come. That will take a political generation to overcome.”
It’s that weakness that fuelled May’s confidence in calling a snap election for June 8 as she seeks a personal mandate to push through her strategy for withdrawal from the EU, the single issue through which all political roads in Britain run at the moment.
She wants to take Britain out of the single market and customs union and is counting on an increased majority in parliament to give her greater flexibility in brokering a deal with her EU counterparts. It would mean she’d no longer be a potential hostage to lawmakers at both extremes of her own party who are seeking to soften or harden her strategy.
Corbyn, 67, whose leadership has been as unassailable among Labour members as it has been unpopular among voters and his own lawmakers, welcomed the election call. He accused the Conservatives of delivering higher debt, lower wages and more child poverty while cutting funding for hospitals and schools.
The election “is the Conservatives, the party of privilege and the richest, versus the Labour Party, the party that is standing up for working people to improve the lives of all”, Corbyn said.