Labour's Lost Decade: Why They Just Keep Losing

Labour had three leaders in the last decade, each with their own vision for the party. So why did the country reject all three? What does this mean for Labour and can they expect to ever get back into Number 10 Downing Street?

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[zachryder]

Thank goodness the "economy party" has been in charge this whole time. Can you imagine the economy being terribly handled?

[iainl]

Labour lost in 2019 because they were shifty about Brexit. Boris Johnson just kept saying "Get Brexit Done" and he looked like he had a plan. He absolutely didn't, but he acted like he did, and that was all it took.

[rufus]

Is it not ironic that Labour have the perception of not being trusted with the economy because of the Bankers crash, which was not their fault and Sunak was one of the Bankers that did actually crash the economy. Yet Sunak is looked as as being good with economy.

[gezzarandom]

2010, the party just had its day, it was seen as old and past it.
2015, the Scottish referendum cost them almost their entire Scottish base, 40 seats in total. Plus nobody had any real confidence in Ed Miliband as a leader.
2017: Too much in fighting, and a split in the party between the left and centre.
2019: Brexit, plus the accusations of anti-semitism and the spilt within in the party.

[Dwh-h]

2010 Labour is similar to 2022 Conservatives. They’re done and people are fed up of them. The tories are still going to act like they know how to run the economy but looking at the front page of the Mail this morning, it looks like even they’re starting to turn in the conservative economic plans

[Phase]

wait, are we gonna just ignore the EU referendum promise Cameron made during the 2015 election? That definitely gained him more votes than he would've expected

[MkVenner]

Perception for Labour is difficult when much of the print media is effectively Conservative propaganda.

[orginal-ascended]

Labour provided a decade of economic growth, rising living standards & making Britain a success on the world stage. Yet the Conservatives used their client media to successfully gaslight the whole country by blaming Labour for the global financial crisis. They repeatedly claimed this somehow meant Labour were bad at economic management, despite Labour successfully getting us through the GFC without imposing the kind of austerity cuts the Conservatives immediately brought in. Under the Conservatives we've had 12 years of economic mediocrity, looking like a clown show on the world stage and drastically falling living standards.

[lorddex]

Ironic that labour is not trusted with money for considering how bad the economy has got in the last decade

[rstainsbury]

It was a hard, hard decade to watch. As a school teacher with friends working in the NHS and social care, I’ve had to watch education and health care provision begin to erode, steadily crumble and in the end, totally collapse. We’re no longer a functioning country. I cry when I think about where we COULD have been by now, if the line graph had continued to gradually climb rather than drop off a series of avoidable cliffs…

[jalioswilinghart]

After Liss Truss, I think Labor should just turn the insult around on "you cant be trusted with the economy".

[JustAGuyWhoLikesStuff.]

Has to also be highlighted that Jeremy Corbyn in his 2017 election had the management team in his own party plotting his demise. Labour isn't just ineffectual or looked on as such, but it's also frankly so divided that it's hard to get a mandate the base and the bureaucracy can agree with.

[sillypuppy]

I don't know if you've noticed this, but Labour mostly seem to either win by massive landslides or with piddly majorities, the former usually coming after long periods of Conservative dominance. Whereas the Tories usually (ie, apart from Thatcher) seem to get by with quite modest majorities in comparison, but for somewhat longer periods.

Two things can be immediately remarked upon. First is that Labour gets these landslides by drawing together the anti-tory vote, usually with a popular and charismatic leader. The second is "time for a change". Lets face it, if a governing party cannot do anything worthwhile for a country after 10 years, it probably never will. The pool of untainted talent in the backbenches is not infinite.

The strange thing is that with PR since the war, the last purely Conservative majority government would have been in 1959. They're just not that popular.

[princeofchetarria]

The fact that the media is mostly owned by a small number of extremely wealthy people like Rupert Murdoch also does a huge disservice to Labour - except for Blair who was fairly right wing and had a personal relationship with him :/

[Phase]

Something else to consider is that Labour lost Scotland to the SNP during this decade. That's a hammer blow to the party's electoral success and I have yet to see any Labour leader come up with a good solution to this

[TheCentristChad]

The UK chose their Conservative Party to be fiscally responsible. They then did Brexit and crashed their economy for almost a decade 🤣🤣

[davidwatts]

What you forgot to mention is that apart from the tories now running the country terribly, Labour also now has a leader who poses no threat to the status quo and doesn't look to make the necessary changes the country needs, giving them an easy ride from the establishment.

[allandavies]

the corruption of Journalism of MSM has a lot to do with public perception and should not be disregarded for the chaos that we are now in.

[ionnanskilliorus]

Failed to mention the multi-party FPTP electoral system that makes it far harder for them to win in the first place, even more so now that the SNP have taken anything they use to get in Scotland. If Labour do win the next election, then they need to reform that, or it'll be the same thing happening again.

[Cybonator]

Brown calling a bigot a bigot should have been his best moment in a normal society