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Comment by Wildgoose | Hacker News Reader

Labour may have done much better than expected in 2017, but they were still 55+ seats behind the Tories, which is nothing like very close to winning.

The Tories won 317 seats (318 including the Speaker), while Labour won 262 seats.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_United_Kingdom_general_el...

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The election isn't simply between those two parties, and with just a handful of seats going differently Labour could have had its first Prime Minister since 2010. That's a win.

Parliamentary elections are more complicated than that, had Labour won three or four most seats they would have likely been in power as a coalition with other parties of the left. This might have quite literally cost Labour the election.

Has Labour ever been in coalition with anyone for an extended period?

Reality is Labour lost the election despite going up against an incredibly weak opposition and basically refusing to discuss or take a position on Brexit, which was an irresponsible form of electioneering. When faced with a competent opposition they took the same approach and were wiped out. That's on Corbyn.

I tend to agree that Corbyn trying to straddle the Remain/Leave camps may have been a fatal error, but who knows whether he would have felt it necessary if he had not been kneecapped in 2017 and won the election. One also shouldn't dismiss the role of the UK press in amplifying "anti-Semitism" and various other smears (like the "tankie" used on this very thread) against Corbyn.

We would have won if it wasn't for ...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stab-in-the-back_myth

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