No Corbyn - Labour's last five years

[jamesg]

Let us say that Corbyn doesn't get the required nominations in 2015 for the Labour leadership race. Maybe Cox & Coyle have a change of heart as they reportedly wished they had, or some others decided 'nah, I'd rather not nominate that bearded fella'.
Eric Joyce still threw his fists in 2012 and Ray Collins decided that after the attempted Unite entryism in Falkirk during 2013 wider party democracy was needed. There is therefore a large membership with the potential for further growth within Labour.
Does any other real left-winger get on the ballot in 2015 and maybe general mass support from new members?
Does a different Labour leader change the campaign and outcome Brexit referendum?
Do we still have Boris as PM in 2020 without so much upheaval?

[heslingtonian]

In such a scenario I expect Burnham would have become Leader in 2015, Brexit would have still narrowly happened and the result of the 2017 General Election would have been broadly similar. I expect Burnham would have stayed on until the 2019 GE which Boris would have won by 20-30 seat majority. Burnham would therefore resign (having narrowly held Leigh) and a far Left winger might be a serious competitor to take over Labour against Starmer, Rayner and Nandy.

[No Offence Alan]

Jul 29, 2020 21:11:34 GMT heslingtonian said:

In such a scenario I expect Burnham would have become Leader in 2015, Brexit would have still narrowly happened and the result of the 2017 General Election would have been broadly similar. I expect Burnham would have stayed on until the 2019 GE which Boris would have won by 20-30 seat majority. Burnham would therefore resign (having narrowly held Leigh) and a far Left winger might be a serious competitor to take over Labour against Starmer, Rayner and Nandy.

Would a narrower Brexit result, say 50.5 to 49.5 for Leave, have emboldened Remainers to block Brexit or emboldened May to reach cross-party for a soft Brexit?

[johnloony]

Jul 29, 2020 21:11:34 GMT heslingtonian said:

In such a scenario I expect Burnham would have become Leader in 2015, Brexit would have still narrowly happened and the result of the 2017 General Election would have been broadly similar. I expect Burnham would have stayed on until the 2019 GE which Boris would have won by 20-30 seat majority. Burnham would therefore resign (having narrowly held Leigh) and a far Left winger might be a serious competitor to take over Labour against Starmer, Rayner and Nandy.

There wouldn't have been a 2017 General Election. It only happened because the Labour Party was way behind in the opinion polls. The Labour Party was way behind in the polls only because Corbyn was leader. If a normal leader had been in place, like Burnham or Cooper, then the polls would have been much closer (Labour might even have been in the lead in the mid-term of the parliament) and Mrs May would not have called an election.

The outcome therefore would have been a soft Brexit being negotiated by Mrs May, and probably enacted in 2019.
The 2020 General Election (due in May 2020 under the FTP Act) would have been delayed by emergency legislation because of Covid19.

[pragmaticidealist]

Going by the most feasible alternative scenario of Burnham winning a Burnham-Cooper-Kendall contest in 2015, they'd have clearly been more 'big beasts' on the Labour front bench as an initial consequence.

Labour run a more enthusiastically pro-Remain campaign, but would it have made much difference? The Leave vote is said to have been a message to 'the establishment'; maybe an established party such as Labour being firmer in its advocacy of Remain would have made the populist message of the Leave campaign/s resonate even more. Let's go for roughly the same referendum result.

What happens then? Well, they'd be grumblings about Burnham from certain quarters of the Labour Party but probably not an actual challenge. Perhaps he reshuffles the Shadow Cabinet to more represent the views of the country (Cruddas, Flint, maybe Frank Field are promoted). Labour's poll ratings aren't poor enough to merit a snap election in 2017.

May (who still becomes PM in the referendum aftermath) is just as inept, but doesn't have the snap election of 2017 to make it obvious to the general public. Lots of parliamentary deadlock until late 2018, when she finally calls a snap election just months prior to the originally scheduled Brexit date. UKIP (led by Nigel Farage, who had taken over from Paul Nuttall earlier that year) agrees to stand down in Tory seats and marginal Labour-Tory seats, as May's rhetoric has been sufficiently pro-Brexit to this point. May gets a working majority of about 40 seats (which, remember, is only a modest gain of around 15 seats in net terms from 2015), despite some awkwardness on the campaign. What's seen to be a fairly Hard Brexit occurs on March 29th 2019. Burnham, who explicitly advocated a Soft Brexit rather than any second referendum, stands down. No Scottish Tory surge and the SNP hold 50 of the 56 seats they won in 2015.

Then the pandemic happens and May is praised for her stellar (although disgustingly authoritarian in the eyes of many, including yours truly) response to it, even from the left, and enjoys record approval ratings throughout and looks set to be PM for some time yet.

[The Bishop]

An unanswered question in the above speculation is whether keeping a Labour left option off the ballot in summer 2015 has any longer term consequences.

The likes of Beckett and Lammy didn't just nominate Corbyn on a whim, despite what people like to say now, they did so because there was a strong demand for it within the membership (even if some of them too - at that time at least - just wanted to "broaden a debate" that had until then been depressingly sterile) Assuming that JC doesn't get on the ballot but the rest is unchanged, that would still mean acting leader Harman proceeding with her disastrous blundering over the benefit cap abolition (complete with that clumsy anti-Burnham briefing) What then?