I've had the rolling news coverage on in the background at work the last few days. In amongst the parade of political 'experts' a few have brought up pasokification. Now my knowledge on this is so wide ranging I had to google what it meant
The general idea is that since around 2010 there has been a steady decline in the popularity of centre and centre-left politics in the Western world with a coinciding rise in nationalist and right wing politics.
Certainly seems to tie in with what we've seen here in recent years and of course matches the new Labour mantra that its not Starmers fault its all part of a long term decline that started well before he took over. However there's another part to this, alongside the rise in nationalist and right wing politics there has been a rise in the popularity of left wing politics. The basic argument seemed to be that people are divided on everything and increasingly uninterested in the middle ground. Brexit was often used as an example which was of course pretty much half the country against the other half and no desire to meet in the middle.
This then brings up an uncomfortable issue for Labour. Instead of writing off Corbyn's success in 2017 as an anomaly it becomes a good example of pasokification in action. When you look at Labour vote share from Blair onwards its quite striking:
43.2 - 40.7 - 35.2 - 29 - 30.4 - 40 - 32.1
Even more so when you consider that the 32.1% share Corbyn got that was a disaster is actually their second highest post-Blair share, second only to Corbyn in the previous election.
Now I'm not for a second suggesting they get Corbyn back in and victory will follow but it does suggest rather than rushing to purge the left and embrace the most middle of the road policies they can find they might want to look outside the Labour bubble at what is going on around the world.
It was also pointed out that in this election most of the few areas Labour performed well in had more left leaning candidates and / or candidates who had taken the government to task. Think there's a lot of thinking for Labour to do.