Recently I have seen numerous Labour activists defending Blair on the basis that he won us 3 general election. A quick look at the polling figures show that this defence is not so black and white:
Labour Party results
Year Popular Vote Percentage of the vote
1997 13,518,167 43.2%
2001 10,724,953 40.7%
2005 9,552,436 35.2%
If Blair was so popular with the electorate why did Labour lose 4 million votes between 1997 and 2005? The only reason Blair won the election in 2005, was that the alternative was Michael Howard.
The argument is that we should continue to use Blair's policies to attract back Tory voters. In reality we did not lose that many votes to the Conservatives. In 1997 the results for the other two parties were as follows:
1997
Cons: 9,600,943
Lib Dem: 5,242,947
And in 2010:
2010
Cons: 10,703,954
Lib Dem, 6.836.824
This shows that of the 4 million lost votes the Conservatives have only taken about a million votes and the Lib Dems about a million and a half.
This means that many who no longer vote Labour have either stopped voting or have opted for smaller parties. It is these parties and the Lib Dems who we need to focus on. Many of whom will have stopped voting Labour because of Iraq and attacks on civil liberties.
Blarism may be good for targeting Tory voters, but that is not where we should be directing our efforts.
1 comment:
You're absolutely right and although we now have this coalition government they have nothing to really crow about. This is why I think Labour needs to move on from Blairism and rediscover the true aims and objectives of the party. There is no point in being the Labour party if you are not offering a genuine alternative to the Tories.
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