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THREAD: Clever Andrew Adonis. He has produced a book on Ernest Bevin that is highly relevant to our politics today while providing any newcomer with all they need to know about this outstanding trade union and political figure. https://twitter.com/Andrew_Adonis/status/1285462755009605632
Andrew is a free spirit – no political party has held his commitment for that long a period of time – and this study holds crucial lessons for a Labour revival under Keir Starmer ( @Keir_Starmer).
Once the election landslide was declared, Boris thanked ex-Labour voters for lending him their support. This volume on Ernest Bevin helps explain why so many of those so-called Labour Red Wall seats fell to the Tory advance.
Labour’s catastrophic defeat was due I believe above all to two causes. The first was that the electorate had by the time they set off to the ballot box this time around a much clearer view of Jeremy Corbyn than they had two years previously.
Many Labour voters regarded the Tory candidate as preferable to a Corbynite. This threat has now been totally removed.
Second, many of the red wall ex-Labour voters thought that Labour had grown away from them, their interests & their wellbeing
As Adonis explains, Bevin might live an openly middle-class life but the mass of working-class voters still saw him as the guardian of their interests.
As Adonis explains, Bevin might live an openly middle-class life but the mass of working-class voters still saw him as the guardian of their interests.
These voters knew that in his gut Bevin felt he was their representative, that his sympathies were on their side and that he would forever push their interests in any settlement to which he was party. While Bevin was at the top Labour voters knew the party would never desert them
Is there anyone at the top of the Labour team that could fulfil this crucial Bevin role of ensuring the full representation of working-class interests at the centre of Labour’s power structure? I believe there is and that person is Labour’s Deputy Leader @AngelaRayner.
