Jeremy Corbyn could have been prime minister with a landslide majority if every “progressive” vote had counted, according to Labour’s former defence spokesman Clive Lewis and the Green party co-leader, Caroline Lucas.
In a joint article for the Guardian, Lucas and Lewis, who is tipped for a return to Labour’s frontbench, write of their frustration that so many marginal seats went to the Conservatives in last week’s election because of wasted progressive votes.
They suggest that the result could have been radically different if Labour, the Greens and the Liberal Democrats could have agreed more electoral pacts.
“If every progressive voter had placed their X tactically to defeat the Tories then Jeremy Corbyn would now be prime minister with a majority of over 100,” Lewis and Lucas wrote.
They added: “We felt a profound sense of frustration and dismay when Tories won by narrow margins in places such as St Ives, Richmond Park and Hastings – it really could have been so different.”
Analysis by Compass, the thinktank that has pushed for a progressive alliance, suggests that 62 seats could have been won from the Tories if progressives had voted for the best placed left-of-centre candidate in each one.
In the election, more than 30 Green candidates stood aside for another progressive candidate who they thought had a better chance of winning. The Liberal Democrats stood aside to allow Lucas herself to comfortably retake her Brighton Pavilion seat. The Greens had offered to stand aside for Labour candidates in 12 other seats in return for Labour standing down in the Isle of Wight, but the Labour leadership refused.
Lewis and Lucas said the short notice of the snap election meant that there was not time to form more pacts. But they suggest that the next election could be different. “If we work together there is nothing progressives can’t achieve,” they write.
Lewis, who was talked about as a possible future Labour leader before Corbyn’s poll surge, claimed a year ago that the party faced an “existential crisis” if it failed to embrace progressive alliances with other parties. His article with Lucas stops short of that assessment. But in a message to the Labour leadership, the pair warn that progressives will desert the party if they don’t see a change in the way politics is conducted.
“Support and votes were lent to Labour, but people can and will take their votes back if they don’t see a new politics emerge,” Lewis and Lucas wrote.
They added: “People in Britain have embraced a more plural and open politics and it’s critical that what happens next continues to build that vision and listen to their voices. To do otherwise would be both a massive disservice to democracy and to misunderstand that the Corbyn effect is just one wave in the tide of change.”
The alternative, Lucas and Lewis argue, is the kind of “regressive alliance” being negotiated between the government and the Democratic Unionist party.
Labour alone does not have all the answers, Lewis and Lucas argue. They write: “Yes, the Labour party has been the main beneficiary of the hunger for change in our country, but this doesn’t mean Labour alone owns it. Politics is now so incredibly volatile and complex. If progressives want to win big, not just to peg the Tories back, or be in office for a short period to ameliorate the worst excesses of free-market economics, then we must build a permanent and vibrant progressive majority for change.”
