The election results that we’ve had through so far are a pretty potent combination for the Labour party. Diane Abbott said this morning that they show that Labour is on course to win the 2020 general election, while Jeremy Corbyn skirted around what they actually meant for the party in the long-term when he gave his reaction. The potency lies in the party’s devastation in Scotland that points to a long-term structural inability to win a majority coupled with English council results that, by being less bad than expected, deceive about the challenge the party faces in winning in those areas in 2020. The party’s moderates are concerned this morning that the Labour leadership will be sitting back and patting itself on the back for avoiding headlines about heavy seat losses when it should instead be worrying that it has not made the gains that it needs in order to have a chance of winning Westminster constituencies in 2020.
Chris Leslie, former Shadow Chancellor and key Labour moderate, tells me:
‘All the evidence says that Labour faces this massive mountain range ahead of us and we have got to be open about whether we are going to scale it.
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