Amid defeat, remember – the left is more than Labour
Saturday 21st December 2019,
, Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
During a deputation to the White House by civil rights leaders in 1963, President John F Kennedy was asked whether he supported the March on Washington, at which Martin Luther King made his “I have a dream” speech. Kennedy said he didn’t. “We want success in Congress, not just a big show at the Capitol … It seemed to me a great mistake to announce a march on Washington before the bill was even in committee.”
Labour won’t win again until it works out why it lost
Friday 13th December 2019,
, Photograph: Anthony Devlin/Getty Images
This changes everything. The fourth national vote in four years has broken the parliamentary logjam with devastating effect. It was a rout. Labour’s vote in its traditional strongholds finally collapsed. The demographic, geographic and social ties that bound its coalition together have unravelled. We have yet to see if they can be put back together again. Britain has elected the most rightwing government for decades, handing the least principled leader in living memory such a massive majority that it could take a decade to get rid of him. Last night was bad. The worst is yet to come.
The view from Stevenage: 'I feel I have to vote to get Johnson out'
Wednesday 11th December 2019,
, Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer
When Eric Harvey contacted the Guardian last month he was planning on voting Liberal Democrat. But he had reservations. Brexit was the main issue for Harvey, a retired registrar and post office senior manager who has lived in Stevenage for two years, but the Lib Dems’ complicity in austerity gave him pause. When I met him a couple weeks later, he was leaning towards Labour. His wife is one of the millions of women affected by the change in pension rules and he liked Labour’s promise on that front, while Labour is the only party that can beat the Conservatives in Stevenage.
Election 2019: Gary Younge returns to his childhood town of Stevenage
Monday 9th December 2019,
, Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer
From Johnson’s lies to Corbyn’s promises – this election is about trust
Friday 6th December 2019,
, Photograph: POOL/Reuters
The appeal of any presidential candidate, said Richard Nixon’s speechwriter, Raymond Price, is based on a “gut reaction, unarticulated, non-analytical, a product of the particular chemistry between the voter and the image of the candidate … [It’s] not what’s there that counts, it’s what’s projected.” That projection “depends more on the medium and its use than it does on the candidate”.