Deborah Mattinson is concerned that her findings didn’t make it to the Beckett Report.
A former Labour pollster who conducted research that fed into a report on why Labour lost the 2015 election has branded the report a “whitewash”.
Deborah Mattinson, the founder director of research and strategy consultancy BritainThinks, told the BBC that the report did not include voter research she had gathered in marginal constituencies including Croydon, Watford, Nuneaton and Glasgow.
Okay…
She said the report was “quite apologetic, lots of defensive stuff in there but nothing that really shone a light on what had gone wrong”.
“I feel very concerned that these lessons won’t be learned,” she said.
She added: “No political party has a divine right to exist and unless Labour really listens to those people it must persuade, it stands no chance of winning the next election.”
Thing is, what she found, we pretty much know anyway. At least, we, the electorate know.
In its four main conclusions, the report found:
- A failure to shake off the myth that the last Labour government was responsible for crashing the economy.
- An inability to deal with “issues of connection” like immigration and benefits.
- A fear among voters of the SNP propping up a minority Labour government.
- Miliband was judged to be not as strong a leader as David Cameron.
All of which we knew the day before the election. None of this is new. If the Beckett Report is missing this out, then they are failing to learn from the lessons of the past. The Corbynista see the surge of support that swept Jezbollah to power as some sort of grass-roots political force that covers the entire country. Realistically, a few thousand SJWs do not an election win make. England is a very conservative country and the idea of an extreme left-wing government that is intent upon stealing their hard-earned income and pissing it away on quangos, fake charities and swarms of migrants is not what they want. And, yes, extreme left is what Miliband was offering. Ultra extreme left, bordering on outright communism is what Corbyn is offering. No, we don’t want it.
And on those four points – yes, the Labour government was responsible for crashing the economy.The evil banksters is a diversion. Who pissed away our reserves? Who left us with empty vaults when the inevitable happened? And who set the regulatory regime in which the banks operated? It was Labour’s fault. All of it.
Immigration – these bastards would let anyone in, no matter how much they hate us and want to drag us into the 7th Century.
Yes, there was a real risk of the SNP effectively governing England. The West Lothian Question writ large. The thought of Wee Willie Krankie calling the shots from Edinburgh certainly made my blood run cold.
Cameron is an arse. But, frankly, compared to Miliband and, heaven forfend, Corbyn, he is a towering statesman.
God help us.
Cameron is an arse. But, frankly, compared to Miliband and, heaven forfend, Corbyn, he is a towering statesman.
God help us.
God help us indeed. Cameron is worse than an arse; he’s the self-declared ‘heir to Blair’. (Shudder…)
I rather liked the way they said “A failure to shake off the myth that the last Labour government was responsible for crashing the economy.” Ha! They really don’t get it, do they. They live in a permanent state of denial and then wonder why people are laughing at them.