PERHAPS the biggest lesson from last week’s general election was that there is a limit to the loyalty of voters and, if pushed too far, people will turn their back on the political party that they and their family have supported for generations.
Labour discovered this on election night. The same members of the party who backed Tony Blair in 1997, 2001 and 2005 could no longer stay loyal to Labour as Jeremy Corbyn took the party away from that central ground on which they once triumphed.
I’ve never understood the whole ‘party loyalty’ concept, where people vote for Labour or the Conservatives because their family or community always has. Why would you vote for a party if you don’t agree with their policies any more?
People say the Conservative victory was due to Brexit, but I think it was also due to scepticism over Labour’s promises. While the ideas in the manifesto sounded fantastic (who wouldn’t want free broadband and no-cost childcare?), the electorate saw them as just that: fantasies. And so formerly staunch Labour supporters voted with their head and not their heart.
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