Apparently, 250 people a day have cut up their Labour membership cards since Starmer was elected leader back in April (approx 57,000 people) and this doesn’t take into account the numbers of people who are simply allowing their membership to lapse. Novara are even estimating it could be over 100,000. Recent YouGov and Opinium polls also show that Labour are now polling badly, as some voter’s appear to be shifting allegiance to the Tories, LibDems and Greens and Starmer’s popularity is taking a nose dive.
Novara also suggest that Starmer’s decision to instigate a wider investigation into the leaked GLU report (i.e. who conducted the investigation, the contents of the report and also how it got leaked and who leaked it) was probably because he was trying to make it “less politically toxic for him”. I’d have to disagree with that argument, simply because Starmer didn’t wait for the investigation into the leaked report to conclude before taking the decision to pay off the smear merchants mentioned in the GLU report and judging by his track record over recent weeks, he clearly doesn’t shy away from taking decisions that could be considered politically toxic for him.
Incidentally, I also take issue with Novara’s assertion that Jeremy Corbyn wasn’t popular by the end of his leadership. As far as I’m aware, the only data they might be basing that assertion on would be the 2019 election result. However, this is not acknowledging the fact that the 2019 election was really just another referendum on Brexit and, unlike in 2017, there was a looming Brexit deadline that focused the Leave and the Remain vote. They’re also not drilling down into the voting data or they would know that Labour secured 10,269,076 votes in the 2019 election, which is more than they won 2015, 2010 and 2005 and it was just 471,572 shy of what Blair took in 2001. Incidentally, it’s also more than the Tories took in 2005, 2001 and 1997 and it’s just shy (by about 457,538) of what the Tories took to win in 2010. Also, I dare say that if the 2019 election hadn’t been a referendum on Brexit there’s a good chance Labour would have had similar figures to the 2017 election and possibly even won, especially as the majority of gains in vote share in the 2019 election were made by pro-Remain parties like the LibDems, Greens and SNP (not the Tories).
