This is actually a good thing for Labour, I think. Although not for, e.g., Labour councillors in cities in the short term.
It’s a challenge that plenty in Labour are taking seriously. “Polanski is a real threat,” says a senior source, warning that the old assumption that “these people have nowhere else to go” no longer holds. No 10 has long believed that the Greens […] pose the biggest threat (a prediction that has so far been borne out).
If ‘senior source’ here is actually being listened to, that’s all to the good.
The solution is of course to move further to the right.
Under a two-party system, that logic was basically a matter of arithmetic: every vote Labour won off the Tories counted double.
Now the system’s fractured, the logic no longer holds: now it’s a matter of uniting your bloc and maximising efficiency. Reform are currently doing that better than Labour and Labour’s institutional memory is preventing them recognising that they need to change strategy (cc. /u/[email protected], making a related argument).
Basically, the Corbyn strategy of uniting the left is now the right one - it was just mistimed.
Left, left, left, right ole left, right…