Realignment is the only hope for the political Left in the UK

Deja Vu; The UK Conservative Party won repeated elections in the 1980s. They have, again, in the 2010s. How will it end this time?

It was always a mystery why so many people voted Conservative in successive election in the 1980s when the party and its leader was so reviled by so many others. I have always assumed the explanation lay in the existence of a strong centre left alternative to Labour. But that does not explain the Conservative landslide of December 2019.

There certainly was third party intervention, but it was of a different kind. Nigel Farage followed a strategy in which candidates for the Brexit Party offered themselves for election in former Labour strongholds which had voted in the 2016 referendum to leave the EU. That undoubtedly took votes away from Labour in sufficient numbers to ensure that, under the British “First Past The Post” electoral system, the Conservative candidates in those seats received more votes than the Labour candidates, though not necessarily many more than at the 2017 election.

But there was undoubtedly another factor, remarked upon by many commentators, including senior Labour Party members. The policies espoused by the Labour Party leadership made them unelectable. In this sense there is a certain congruity with the 1980s.

The uncontestable fact is that the only time the Labour Party was able to win…