The public were led to believe that Labour’s policies were extreme left-wing, which of course they weren’t, and that Corbyn was somewhere between Joseph Stalin and Genghis Khan. Most other European countries have a mixed economy of private and public ownership in varying degrees, and there was nothing revolutionary about any of it. The problem is that the public have been slowly, drip by drip, cut by cut, been led to accept the lowest state pensions in a Europe, the highest train fares, and steadily worsening standards in the NHS. As an illustration of that, when I retired 6 years ago, breaching the 4 hour target in A&E was rare enough (well under the 5% target) to warrant a full-scale investigation. Now more than 25% of patients breach 4 hours and nobody has the time any more.
The point of all my waffle is that people believe what they are told by and large. Don’t forget that one of Blair’s biggest achievements before the 1997 election was getting Rupert Murdoch on his side, which he had done by ditching any remaining vestiges of socialism in the manifesto. The propaganda value of the Sun, the News of the World, and the Times and Sunday Times was far greater in 1997 than it is today, so that was a huge coup. Nowadays of course Corbyn had not just the written press but even the BBC ranged against him, not to mention all the bots on Facebook and Twitter. The Tories seem to have all those bases covered, which definitely needs sorting out, whoever becomes the next Labour leader.
