Election retrospectives are quite often useless exercises in 20/20 hindsight, but I'd be interested in hearing the reaction to this article from some of the Labour activists I seem to recall being on the thread.
The article has now been removed; and I wouldn't call myself an activist anymore (since the last campaign I worked on was Smith's leadership bid last summer) but from what I remember the article was pretty baseless, and seemed to be someone just swiping at Unite+GMB over a few tactical decisions.
All the evidence; Copeland by-election, local elections, polling, focus groups, canvassing etc suggested that we were going to get slaughtered in seats in the Midlands and North, and that seats with less than a 7K majority were under threat. This meant the party had to give up on ultra-marginals like Chester, Wirral etc.
I knew someone who worked for the Tory campaign in Yorkshire, and they're polling+campaigning was confirming this at first. Of course there was a clear switch in the election campaign (even myself, as one of the most devout corbynskeptics expected the party to get more than 200 seats)
There seems to be some sniping from those on the left but outside of the party structures that HQ sabotaged the campaign/didn't do enough. To make a strained comparison it certainly seems similar to the relationship between the RNC and Trump; Corbyn inspired lots of people who didn't vote Labour in 2015 (greens, students, non-voters etc) and Labour used it's money/operations to turn these people out.
One thought I had about this election is that there was a consensus that Brown should have called an election after the 2007 Labour conference. Failure to do so dogged him the next few years and setup defeat in 2010. Perhaps given what happen to May in 2017 how Brown handled or should have handled the 2007 Labour conference might now be viewed differently?
Yes. Lots of ex-brown staffers have said that it confirms what they thought about 2007; and I've always said the comparisons between May and Brown are apt.
Brown would have followed the may playbook; avoid debates, attach Cameron as weak etc. And Cameron would have had his inheritance tax pledge which would have done wonders in southern marginals.
The expectations for 2007 were different; no-one thought that Brown would gain seats, whereas May was expected to gain 100+.
