Flickr/chrisjohnbeckett
, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Labour loves Jeremy: but why?
YouGov has just published some polling data which has excited understandable interest. It shows that despite, or perhaps because of, the media barrage against him, current Labour party members are overwhelmingly happy with the job Jeremy Corbyn is doing as party leader. To some extent these findings are to be expected, given reports elsewhere about the turnover of members since his election, as ‘moderates’ leave and leftists join, continuing to shift the political composition of the membership as a whole. Predictably, Labour centrists are in near-despair, especially given that the same polling shows Labour members significantly out of step with broader public opinion on many key contemporary issues. But what is truly remarkable about the poll findings is the extent to which that membership agree with both the Blairites and the wider public on a particular key issue: the electability of Jeremy Corbyn.
Astonishingly, perhaps, only 50% of the Labour membership currently see Corbyn as having a decent chance of becoming prime minister in 2020, while many more currently approve of his leadership. This means that a large section of the current membership simply do not see winning the next election as the most important thing for Corbyn to be trying to do.
