The vote share point is really annoying because it's true, seems to me.
Also: if we're talking about the 2017 & 2019 elections, why are we focusing on making guesses about leader popularity influencing votes, rather than Brexit? Brexit was, uh, something of a live issue at the time, you may recall.
The vote share point is really annoying because it's true, seems to me.
Also: if we're talking about the 2017 & 2019 elections, why are we focusing on making guesses about leader popularity influencing votes, rather than Brexit? Brexit was, uh, something of a live issue at the time, you may recall.
Brexit was undoubtedly a factor and it's decreased salience has probably helped Starmer. However, it's still speculative to say Brexit was more important than the leaders of the parties. Polls consistently showed that Corbyn was highly unpopular with many people and they would not vote for him
Invoking Brexit is no more speculative than ignoring it as if it were irrelevant. And if inferences from polls don't count as speculation, one can cite polls suggesting that Brexit mattered, just as one can cite polls suggesting that Corbyn's unpopularity mattered.
(And if we're being really rigorous, to assume that Brexit and Corbyn's unpopularity are distinct causes is itself speculative! It's plausible that a significant part of Corbyn's unpopularity came from distrust cultivated by the delayed implementation of Brexit, and from Labour's slide from accepting the Brexit referendum's result in '17 to wanting a do over in '19. A key player in the latter was one Sir Keir Starmer QC, who bounced the party toward overturning the referendum with a surprise announcement at the main party conference that no one was ruling out overturning it.)
The vote share point is really annoying because it's true, seems to me.
Also: if we're talking about the 2017 & 2019 elections, why are we focusing on making guesses about leader popularity influencing votes, rather than Brexit? Brexit was, uh, something of a live issue at the time, you may recall.
Brexit was undoubtedly a factor and it's decreased salience has probably helped Starmer. However, it's still speculative to say Brexit was more important than the leaders of the parties. Polls consistently showed that Corbyn was highly unpopular with many people and they would not vote for him
Invoking Brexit is no more speculative than ignoring it as if it were irrelevant. And if inferences from polls don't count as speculation, one can cite polls suggesting that Brexit mattered, just as one can cite polls suggesting that Corbyn's unpopularity mattered.
(And if we're being really rigorous, to assume that Brexit and Corbyn's unpopularity are distinct causes is itself speculative! It's plausible that a significant part of Corbyn's unpopularity came from distrust cultivated by the delayed implementation of Brexit, and from Labour's slide from accepting the Brexit referendum's result in '17 to wanting a do over in '19. A key player in the latter was one Sir Keir Starmer QC, who bounced the party toward overturning the referendum with a surprise announcement at the main party conference that no one was ruling out overturning it.)