As the magnitude of Labour’s defeat sinks in, calls for Jeremy Corbyn’s departure multiply

Yes­ter­day’s Unit­ed King­dom snap gen­er­al elec­tion was an unmit­i­gat­ed dis­as­ter for the Labour Par­ty, the polit­i­cal voice of Britain’s work­ing fam­i­lies. The par­ty saw its worst elec­toral per­for­mance since the 1930s, los­ing dozens of seats to Boris John­son’s Con­ser­v­a­tives, who had gam­bled (adept­ly, as it turns out) that an ear­li­er than expect­ed gen­er­al elec­tion would strength­en their hand.

A fierce debate is already rag­ing online about why Labour lost so badly.

Neolib­er­al forces have tried to argue that the prob­lem was Labour’s man­i­festo, which was bold and unabashed­ly social­ist. But pub­lic opin­ion research indi­cates that much of what Labour had to offer is very pop­u­lar with the British public.

Cor­byn’s camp has argued that the elec­tion turned on Brex­it, the Unit­ed King­dom’s planned exit from the Euro­pean Union.

While it is true that Brex­it was def­i­nite­ly a fac­tor in this elec­tion, with Boris John­son using it as a wedge issue to sep­a­rate Labour from key seg­ments of Labour’s coali­tion, Labour had a big­ger prob­lem than its posi­tion on Brex­it: vot­ers’ intense dis­like of par­ty leader Jere­my Cor­byn.

Had Cor­byn stepped aside for the good of the par­ty and made way for a new leader, Labour would like­ly have per­formed bet­ter in the election.

But he did­n’t, and now Labour is in cri­sis. Even after last night’s shel­lack­ing, Cor­byn has refused to step down, con­ced­ing only that he will not lead Labour in the next gen­er­al elec­tion. For many in his par­ty, that is not good enough.

Labour MP Wes Street­ing told Sky News:

If this elec­tion were just about hard work and sheer foot­work on the ground, the Labour par­ty would have won a land­slide major­i­ty. Labour activists could not have worked hard­er. This defeat wasn’t theirs. I believe in par­ty democ­ra­cy. And I believe Labour mem­bers have just as big a respon­si­bil­i­ty to lis­ten to the vot­ers as me.

And what I would say to Jere­my Cor­byn and his apol­o­gists is they had every­thing they want­ed at this elec­tion. They had the leader they want­ed, the NEC [nation­al exec­u­tive com­mit­tee] they want­ed, the polit­i­cal strat­e­gy they want­ed and, hav­ing sacked a load of peo­ple in head office, the exec­u­tive lead­er­ship that they want­ed too.

The one thing they didn’t have was the sup­port of the British peo­ple. You can side­line Labour MPs, you can sack the staff, you can des­e­lect the NEC and all the rest of it, but you can’t des­e­lect the vot­ers, and it’s time we start­ed lis­ten­ing to Labour voters.

Because right across the coun­try, in leave seats like mine, in remain seats, Labour’s vote share went down.

Labour MP Ian Mur­ray, the last Labour MP left in Scot­land, con­curred.

Every door I knocked on, and my team and I spoke to 11,000 peo­ple, men­tioned Cor­byn. Not Brex­it but Corbyn.

I’ve been say­ing this for years. The out­come is that we’ve let the coun­try down and we must change course and fast.

Lon­don May­or Sadiq Khan, a Remain­er, was equal­ly blunt.

If we are tru­ly hon­est with our­selves, we know in our hearts that Jere­my Corbyn’s lead­er­ship was deeply unpop­u­lar with the British peo­ple and that we were extreme­ly unlike­ly to form a Labour gov­ern­ment last night. Labour’s shock­ing and repeat­ed fail­ure to tack­le anti-Semi­tism, and our inabil­i­ty to put for­ward a cred­i­ble and believ­able set of pri­or­i­ties for gov­ern­ing, have made a major con­tri­bu­tion to the scale of this defeat … Labour now stands more polit­i­cal­ly and cul­tur­al­ly removed than ever before from many of the peo­ple our par­ty was formed to represent.

Khan had pre­vi­ous­ly warned that Cor­byn’s lead­er­ship would lead to dis­as­ter.

Polling offers evi­dence that it was indeed Cor­byn, not Brex­it or the man­i­festo, that prompt­ed vot­ers to turn away from the Labour Par­ty in this election.

“We asked vot­ers why they had not vot­ed for par­tic­u­lar par­ties in our on the day poll (12th Decem­ber). For Labour, the key issue was the lead­er­ship,” Opini­um Research tweet­ed, refer­ring to Jere­my Cor­byn.

The Guardian’s Pol­ly Toyn­bee declared that Cor­byn and his aides had guid­ed Labour straight into an abyss — “devoid of agili­ty, charis­ma and cred­i­bil­i­ty”:

Labour was dis­as­trous­ly, cat­a­stroph­i­cal­ly bad, an agony to behold. A coterie of Cor­bynites cared more about grip­ping pow­er with­in the par­ty than sav­ing the coun­try by win­ning the election.

The nation­al exec­u­tive com­mit­tee, a slate of nod­ding Cor­bynite place-per­sons, dis­graced the par­ty with its sec­tar­i­an decisions.

Once it was plain in every poll and focus group that Cor­bynism was elec­toral arsenic, they should have pro­pelled him out, but elec­toral vic­to­ry was secondary.

Labour sup­port­er Russ in Cheshire authored a lengthy tweet­storm swat­ting down the many excus­es peo­ple have made on Cor­byn’s behalf for Labour’s per­for­mance.

Peo­ple will say “we had to let him try”. We did let him try. For years. He lost the ref­er­en­dum in 2016. He lost the elec­tion in 2017. He lost the EU elec­tions in 2019. He’s lost again. The only thing he’s won was “most unpop­u­lar Leader of Oppo­si­tion in history”.

Peo­ple will say “the soft left did­n’t help him”. We did. We pro­posed him as leader. We elect­ed him leader. We vot­ed for him in elections.

Giv­en the elec­tion result and the evi­dence that his lead­er­ship has been dis­as­trous, Jere­my Cor­byn’s plan to stay on as Labour leader dur­ing a “peri­od of reflec­tion” seems extra­or­di­nar­i­ly unwise. He should step down imme­di­ate­ly so that he does not remain the face of Labour dur­ing the Speech from the Throne and the ini­tial meet­ings of the new Par­li­manet in West­min­ster. Labour can’t waste any time begin­ning its recov­ery from this elec­toral catastrophe.