It’s a measure of how low the once-great Labor party have sunk that they’ve spent no doubt a massive consultant’s fee for two has-been politicians to tell them what any punter in the street could have told them for free. The only difference is that Weatherill and Emerson Sherlock and Obvious used somewhat politer language than the average punter would.
Still, Sherlock and Obvious get to pocket a handsome fee for coming to the stunning conclusion that Labor lost the May election because their policies sucked and Bill Shorten is a creep. Oh – and the party has abandoned its traditional constituency in order to chase the votes of a tiny clique of inner-city trendoids.
Labor’s campaign review has declared “Bill Shorten’s unpopularity contributed to the election loss” and he failed to formulate a narrative that unified the party’s policies.
The review finding […] say Labor “did not settle on a persuasive strategy for winning the election”.
The findings say the negative gearing and franking credits policies exposed Labor to attacks from the Coalition and the party had “no clear voter-choice message”.
The policies only exposed Labor to attacks because the policies were so diabolical. Voters had a clear choice, all right – just not the one Labor wanted.
Even worse for Labor, formerly rusted-on workers have rejected the “party of the workers” in droves.
The review outlines how its traditional base turned against the party […]“Outer-metropolitan, provincial and rural Australia swung against Labor while inner-metropolitan areas swung to Labor.
“Economically insecure, low income voters in outer-urban and regional Australia swung against Labor.”
Christians and Chinese-Australians also swung against Labor. Tertiary-educated and higher-income Australians “swung strongly to Labor”.
The pattern is clear: Labor is now the party of the elites: the rich, university-educated in the inner-cities. Gough Whitlam won back Catholic voters long-estranged by the 1950s. But Christian voters, alarmed by the constant attacks on their freedoms from the left, and Labor’s infatuation with “queer” activism, are walking away from Labor again. Labor can’t even rely on the “wog vote” any more.
But, even if they have identified where it’s gone pear-shaped for Labor, Sherlock and Obvious still can’t bring themselves to admit why. Instead of admitting that their policies were crap, Labor are insisting that voters were just too stupid to realise how wonderful they were.
Attempting to explain the swings, the review authors blamed it on the “complexity and frequency of Labor’s policy announcements”, which crowded out policies and made it “difficult for local campaigns”.
It also turns out that banking on the nosey-nannas and dreadlocked unemployables of green activism is not a winning strategy.
“Labor’s climate change policy won the party votes among young and affluent older voters in urban areas” […] associating Labor with the Greens in voters’ minds also had a negative impact on Labor’s disastrous results in regional electorates and “devastated its support in the coal mining communities of regional Queensland and the Hunter Valley”.
theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/labor-election-review-shorten-unpopular-no-clear-message/
But Labor’s blindness to its own unelectability goes right to the top.
Bill Shorten has declared political attacks by Clive Palmer and the Liberal Party “successfully tarnished my public standing” […]the review did not consider the merits of the policies the party took to the election.
theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/palmer-liberal-party-tarnished-my-public-standing-shorten-responds-to-labor-election-review
You just keep telling yourself that, Bill.