In the period mentioned since the Labour Party was formed, they only managed to win a majority in 6 elections (with the final being Blair after 18 years). In the same period, the Conservative Party has managed almost double this.
When Labour was supposed to be 'for the working man', why is it that they struggled so much to win General Elections? It took them up until 1945 to finally outright win an election when it took WW2 to make this happen.
I also noticed that more often than not, when there is a higher voter turnout, the Tories seem to win.
Was the UK population just more centrist than anything and Labour have traditionally been too leftist/radical?
A different way of phrasing my title question may be, what caused Labour to win the few elections they did manage to win? Is it just sheer discontent at successive Tory governments? Or were successful campaigns just based on particularly popular policy proposals?
I'd be interested to see if there have been any studies on this
Earlier on the liberals were the bigger or almost as vig progressive party which helps here. Beyond that, it's worth saying that in a large number of elections labour plus liberal (social democrat, liberal democrat) votes were over 50% so part of this is a split on the left.
Beyond that I'd be suspicious of a single big cause. Since 1945 labour won 6 and Tories 8, and the gap is largely because of the 80s. The reason for that is still somewhat controversial as people still debate the legacy of Thatcher and about what lessons labour should learn from its years of opposition.
But very crudely, a central issue in the 70s was the power of the unions, which both parties has struggled with. Thatcher broke the power of the unions, labour respondes to losing by moving to the left and indulging its own partisans (the labour 1983 manifesto has gone down as 'the longest suicide note in history').
Later Kinnock, Smith and Blair/Brown moved back towards the centre and New Labour was in power till 2010, when it was probably the financial crisis more than anything that did for them, though it's worth saying the Tories had also spent the early years of opposition indulging their own partisans with leaders like Ian Duncan Smith and Michael Howard and won when they brought in the more centrist Cameron.