In a new article, GQR London Vice President Peter McLeod draws on our polling to assess where Corbyn’s Labour went wrong at the General Election and how the party should learn from the experience. In particular, Labour’s main excuse for its failure to win: that Brexit polarized the country and gave Labour no path to victory:
A few awkward facts about Brexit and the 2019 election make Labour’s excuse untenable. First, the election came 1,267 days after Britain’s vote to leave the EU. Labour had three and a half years to come up with something that worked for it on Brexit, but instead, a mere 64 days after he became Conservative leader, it was Boris Johnson who first used the slogan that won the election.
Second, Brexit was not an “easy” issue for the Tories. It dominated and then destroyed Theresa May’s career as Prime Minister. After the 2016 referendum, the Conservative vote was more divided over Brexit than Labour’s: a poll we did in March 2017 showed that of people who had voted Conservative at the 2015 election, 57% were Leavers and 43% Remainers. Labour’s 2015 voters were more united: 64% voted Remain and 36%, Leave.
Read the full article here.
The article refers to three GQR polls conducted during the last Parliament. The relevant data is available below: