I was happy to support Labour in the election (and note with some small amount of pleasure that my constituency remains red) because I believe that a vote on a "deal", something at least close to concrete, is far more valuable than a vote on a vague declaration of intent. And no, a general election was not the proper forum to determine whether or not the patchily reheated withdrawal agreement was a good way forward for the union. In all truth, Labour should have maybe not helped but at least allowed the Tories to get on with their shitshow leave policy, bided their time and then (2021 perhaps) brought forward the confidence motion to trigger an election. But I suspect we are now locked in to at least a decade of Tory rule, and without a strong opposition at that.
I kind of felt bad for Corbyn personally because he was trying to acquiesce on the point of being more "electable" by agreeing to put at least a couple of fingers into the teflonising machine, yet his backbencher instincts compelled him to stick up for his beliefs, kind of the opposite of Tim Farron's gay marriage gaffe. So you ended up with someone who was honest about his most controversial views, yet was fidgeting in his seat over a question about the Queen's speech, which most people in this country don't watch or care about in any sense. He would die on hills that would play up his association, rightly or wrongly, with antisemitism, yet meaningless trifles presented some kind of image dilemma for him, and not even the incumbent PM hiding in a fridge while his aide told a journalist to fuck off on national television was apparently enough to take the pressure off in any real way. "Boris is Boris" as Theresa May once said, shortly before sacking him; show him doing something patently retarded and people will laugh and clap for more.
Speaking of Boris Johnson, the worst thing Labour could have done was to fall into the same trap the Democrats did with Donald Trump. By attacking his character and things he had said in the past, they played into a game of personality over policy, so all Bozo had to do was bumble around affably repeating the same basic lines over and over, and not even those self same lines coming from the bloated lips and B'stardish grimace of Gove and Raab respectively were enough to make them seem less than wonderful. Ironically Labour and its activist army probably drove more support to the Tories by attacking their leader so fervently.
So I think Labour played its hand quite poorly, appealing largely to "champagne socialists" and the sort of people who view Ash Sarkar as an insightful political commentator, but the deck was stacked against them with their leader being a pro-Palestine critic of Israel who wanted to go after the wealth of the British elite. Even Ed Miliband, himself a Jew, felt the weight of the establishment coming down on him when he whipped in favour of recognising Palestine as an independent state in 2014. Yet the party could have gotten rid of Corbyn at any time had they actually presented a credible alternative. With the best will in the world, Cringela Eagle and Owen "99 Flake" Smith were about as viable as chocolate fireguards. Labour would have been in an infinitely better position if (for example) Hilary Benn, who had already been sacked from Corbyn's cabinet and probably had popular narrative on his side, had been convinced to step up instead.
Well, shit happens. It's at least going to be amusing to see brexiteers of all stripes gradually realise how little what they're getting matches what they voted for. You won, get over it, and so on and so on.
Signed, a working class "small el" lefty who doesn't particularly care for the EU and for whom the real tragedy is that FPTP strikes again.