Hello and welcome to the political party. In this episode I'm delighted to be joined by a rare returning guest Deborah Matanson from Britain thinks.

And as with last time talking to Deborah this is just the so much detail and analysis in here it is packed.

And this is this isn't just about why the tourism and why labor one this is about this is about social undercurrents this is about what the country really thinks what different parts of the country really think.

It's absolutely endlessly wonderful and enlightening and just energizing talking to someone who has this inside it's not a mind reading exercise is phenomenal how much she knows about the country and about a behavior particularly obviously when it comes to voting.

But my word if anyone listening to this is working on the campaigns for the labor leadership candidates you have to use that there's so much in this that will help you and I'm sure some of the candidates themselves are listening in which firstly hello.

And secondly this is a they're serving this up as a as a service really to the labor party. We talked about the Lib Dems the tourism other things as well.

Really this is so many lessons in here this is just absolutely endlessly fascinated so I'm going to stop waffle and I'll be gone by asking Deborah what the top lines of her research work coming out of that election.

So actually I think the first thing to say and I think it is important to land this is that what we've been witnessing is quite a long term decline for the labor party so it wasn't all about what happened in the months or even the years running up to you know 2019 December.

It actually has been happening for quite a long time I think there are a number of things that have been eroding for a while so so that's the first thing to say that the things that have been going wrong for a long time are.

The the party brand if you like you know is this a party for me and with a lot of voters actually they're looking at it and thinking no it's not and they've been thinking that for quite a while I mean you know one of the things I've done in focus groups is if this party were a person.

What kind of person would they be and one of the things I like to see what would be there they come down with me dinner they would cook okay so back in the day when I first started doing work for labor in the sort of late 80s it was a pie and a pint it was very straightforward you know it was just what you might eat yourself.

It later morphed into not a pie but sausage on croot and not a not a pint but some kind of you know craft beer that was that was honed in a in a brewery in chalk farm or something.

Now it's keen while and you know I think that that is telling you something about how a lot of people particularly traditional labor party voters are looking at the brand that's been a long time coming as has and connected to that is the sort of weakening coalition that that that all political parties depend on a coalition of voters to see them over the wire.

You know it's not like your typical voter is one type of person you need to bring people together over a shared set of values and objectives and sense of purpose and I think that that has been fragmenting also for a long time.

The third thing I think is economic competency so when I first started working with labor in the late 80s it was the biggest problem that labor faced.

And for labor to win in 97 even in 97 labor did not get ahead on the economy in fact we're still slightly behind people forget that all their later got ahead and that's how labor came to win again in 2001 and 2005.

2010 was a problem following the financial crisis and I think that's been a downhill slide back to what you might regard as a natural state of affairs which is voters struggle to trust labor with their money.

So that's you know that's a long term thing as well and then the final point is is is weak leadership the single most important thing in winning an election is having a leader that people like and want to represent them in the country and labor hasn't had that for quite a long time now.

So just to take the first point this this the sense of a long term decline of the labor brand in its relationship with the public.

That is the argument that people like Jeremy Corbyn and people loyalty are saying well look this is basically like coast of the erosion this has just been happening now is it but they didn't do very much about it to address it and that's well that's the thing is that that that could have been challenged by a change in behavior now what they say well look this basically started under Tony Blaine and he lost he's we started losing votes back then and you know no leader since has been able to stop that.

So in a way Corbyn's analysis has a grain of truth to it well it does but what I would say if we fast forward to where we are now and what happened in the last few years you know that if you like the Corbyn period I think what we saw is a really dramatic acceleration of those long term problems so rather than doing something to address or try to address those problems we've seen that you know them the mix accelerating and getting much much worse really quite quickly.

And in terms of the cultural values that run underneath not just this election but society of course the economy is a big one but there is a sense as well having a ready research that people are identified with the labor party in quite a broad way is that social values the things that they value I mean what are they apart from the economy what are the social undercurrents that have led to this.

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