Labour 'Haven’t Really Learnt Their Lesson' After General Election Defeat – Politician

© AP Photo / Jeff OversOpposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, left, and Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson, during a head to head live Election Debate at the BBC TV studios
Opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, left, and Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson, during a head to head live Election Debate at the BBC TV studios - Sputnik International
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A new survey claims the reason Labour lost in the December 2019 UK General Election was due in part to the British public’s dislike of party leader Jeremy Corbyn, as opposed to any policy regarding Brexit. Robin Tilbrook, chairman of the English Democrats, gave his view on the survey findings.

Sputnik: Do you agree with the findings of the poll, that Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership was the reason why Labour lost December’s General Election?

Robin Tilbrook: Yes, I believe so. The party continues to scold the electorate and I don’t think that they have really learnt their lesson, and they particularly haven’t learnt the lesson about patriotism, and in fact; only in the last few days, we’ve had quite a vivid demonstration of how a party that’s actually really left-wing, Sinn Fein, can still get the majority of the vote, or a very substantial proportion of the vote in Ireland.

Sinn Fein is really a very left-wing party, but its main idea in the public’s mind is that they are an Irish nationalist party, so it wasn’t just the left-wing aspect of Corbyn’s policies, it was also the fact that he was seen as being unpatriotic.

Sputnik: Who could win the Labour leadership race?

Robin Tilbrook: I suppose it’s between Sir Keir Starmer, who I would regard as a Labour establishment figure, and a very clear 'Remainer' in all his thinking, and therefore not somebody who has learnt their lesson at all I don’t think regarding Brexit, and the need to be patriotic.

Then there is Rebecca Long-Bailey. I wondered if what we saw the other day with a row over a data breach, and an attack on Sir Keir Starmer’s campaign, whether that suggested that the people that are operating the Labour Party at the moment, who are momentum-supporting types, whether they are worried that he might actually beat their candidate Rebecca Long-Bailey.

Sputnik: The British Prime Minister has come under fire in recent weeks for what many say is a partial re-nationalisation of Northern Rail, but should Labour still prioritise the re-nationalisation of trains in future policies?

Robin Tilbrook: My understanding of the case with Boris Johnson and Northern Rail, was that they had done it simply because that particular franchise was operating at a very bad level, and not doing at all what it ought to have been doing, so Johnson has taken the franchise back, which the Conservatives also did to the Eastern franchise a few years ago, when that was failing.

It is part of the way that the Conservatives privatise the railways, that it can be done, it’s not really nationalisation as such, it’s a regulatory correction I suppose you might say, rather than nationalisation.

The problem with the way that the railways were privatised, is that it’s quite complicated, and it doesn’t produce market competition, and the government has got a role in deciding who is going to run different bits of the railway service, whilst retaining overall control of the actual network.

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It’s not been a very satisfactory privatisation, and it hasn’t worked terribly well, and I think that’s part of the reason why people think that the railways should be back in national ownership, but the trouble is that it would be an expensive thing to do, and I’m not sure whether it would be any better than what we’ve got now in the long term.

I’m not really against the idea of nationalisation as a matter of ideology, but at the same time; I think the best way to judge it is to see if it actually works for people.

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