Jeremy Corbyn, a muddled Brexit message, antisemitism and tactical voting – some of the factors identified by losing Labour MPs as having caused Thursday’s catastrophic election defeat.
Many former and aspiring MPs who failed to win on Thursday have told the Guardian that Labour’s outgoing leader and his views were the biggest single factor that contributed to their downfall.
A complicated Brexit policy, a failure to tackle antisemitism and even the party’s failing political machinery were also contributing factors to the worst result for Labour since 1935, they said.
The Guardian spoke to 10 losing Labour candidates, some of whom were this week disabling their security alarms and emptying their parliamentary offices to make room for new Tory members.
Emma Reynolds, who lost her seat in Wolverhampton North East after nine years, said the biggest hurdle for undecided households had been reluctance to vote for Corbyn as prime minister.
She said it was so bad that even those voters who wanted to cut Boris Johnson’s majority could not bring themselves to support Labour in case the MP for Islington North actually won.
“We couldn’t use the argument that Jeremy Corbyn wasn’t going to win this time. We used that in 2017 but people didn’t believe it now.
“Incredibly I spoke to people who wanted a change but the change was they didn’t want to vote Labour any more. The fact we didn’t provide a credible alternative is a betrayal of the people we traditionally represent,” she said.
Graham Jones, the former Labour whip, said the campaign became so bad in his constituency of Hyndburn that canvassers began to play a form of “Corbyn bingo” as they counted the votes leaking away from usual Labour supporters.
“Four out five voters would not vote for Corbyn and his policies. Door one wouldn’t vote for him because he was scruffy; the next person wouldn’t vote for him because of antisemitism in the party; the next because of connections with Hamas; and the next because he seemed unable to lead. On one road, you might get the full set,” he said.
Liz McInnes, the former shadow foreign affairs spokesperson whose seat in Heywood and Middleton in Greater Manchester was won by a Conservative for the first time, said hostility towards Corbyn was exacerbated by winter weather and a lack of support from Labour HQ who were struggling under huge demand.
“It was a nightmare campaign. We were all ill, most of my team caught colds. Campaigning through the rain was so miserable. Most of the time, it was me and a small group of local activists.
“I feel that the party was complacent about my seat. Most mornings I would have a team of half a dozen fantastic local activists. In the afternoon, I’d get two or three people and then a few more in the evening. But I could see it was going badly. I was eventually sent an organiser for the last few days but it was too late,” she said.
Her anger towards the party’s leadership has increased since losing because no one has contacted her to offer support.
“Nothing, not a word, has come from Jeremy and his office or McDonnell and his office or Labour HQ. It is as if losing MPs have been unceremoniously disposed of,” she said.
Following the defeat, Corbyn has said he was very sad at the outcome but remained “proud” of the manifesto.
Phil Wilson, who lost Tony Blair’s former Sedgefield seat in Co Durham, said that the manifesto offered too many policies to too many different groups.
“You could find some policy item you agreed with but the manifesto has got to add up to something coherent. It didn’t offer hope for the future.
“The impression I got is someone writing the manifesto was sitting in an office with a queue of pressure groups outside coming in saying: can you add this to the list? Which we did without any thought and without being rational,” he said.
Other MPs who won in their constituencies have placed the blame firmly at the feet of the party’s Brexit policy. Last week the party chair, Ian Lavery, who narrowly held on to Wansbeck, told the BBC: “What we are seeing in the Labour heartlands is people very aggrieved at the fact the party basically has taken a stance on Brexit the way they have.” He added that ignoring the wishes of 17.4 million voters was “not a good recipe”.
Claudia Webbe, who was re-elected in Leicester East, told a parliamentary Labour party meeting on Tuesday evening that the party had “a lot to celebrate”.
But Natalie Fleet, who lost out the former mining seat of Ashfield to a Tory, told the Guardian that Labour’s election machine faltered from the beginning of the campaign, while the message MPs had to sell was muddled and convoluted.
She said: “It felt a bit chaotic. Labour said they were ready, but they weren’t. Freeposts were dropping late, Dialogue was down – that’s the phonebanking app. Just basic things that should have been in place, that weren’t.
“We couldn’t get things out on social media. For those trying to get it set up as the campaign started, it was physically impossible. We’d got a budget for it and everything, but we just couldn’t make it work.”
Emma Dent Coad, who took Kensington from the Tories in 2017, only to lose the seat to them in this election, said she lost her seat because of claims by remain-supporting advocates of tactical voting, some of which were published by the Guardian, that her Lib Dem rival Sam Giymah was the most likely candidate to beat the Tories.
“People believed it. Some of my own friends did, they voted Liberal Democrat. They said: ‘I’m really sorry Emma, but I’ve seen the polling. You can’t win.’ And I lost by 150. Only 76 people needed to think: ‘Give us a break’ and I would have been back in.”
