Backing for Corbyn has increased amongst party members says Times poll (updated)

times front page copyThis article has now been updated based on the full YouGov tables now published, which also reveal that opposition to austerity now stretches right across Labour’s political spectrum.

The Times (£) has revealed that backing for Jeremy Corbyn amongst those who voted in the contest has increased from the 59% who voted for him to 66% who think he is doing well according to a poll by YouGov of those who voted in the contest this summer. This is because whilst ‘only’ 86% of those who actually voted for him think he is doing “well” as party leader, he has impressed 40% of Andy Burnham supporters, 29% of Yvette Cooper’s and even 9% of Liz Kendall’s.

There is no significant difference between full members and supporters, nor by class or region (if anything those in the north are more favourable to Jeremy). The Times refers to this as “a remarkable endorsement” of the Labour leader after clashes between him and the shadow cabinet and what it describes as “his questioning of the shoot-to-kill policy for terrorists and confusion over the party’s approach on austerity“. Continue reading

New YouGov poll shows Corbyn has more support than Burnham & Cooper combined

Labour Leadership Candidates and now they are 4_edited-1A new YouGov poll for the London Standard shows that Jeremy Corbyn “has more support among London public than nearest rivals, Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper, put together“.  Forty-six per cent of Londoners with an opinion thought Jeremy would make the best Labour leader, reports the Standard, compared with 21% for Burnham, 20% for Cooper and 12% for Liz Kendall.

However the detailed tables reveal even more interesting information. Corbyn leads among 2015 Labour voters who express a preference in London by 52% over Cooper on 21%, Burnham on 20% and Kendall on 7%. Continue reading

Labour’s Scottish bloodbath … And what needs to be done about it

Salmond and Sturgeon BLOODBATHAs an ex-Trot, I’ve got previous when it comes to looking at reality and laughing in its face. I’ve been running through those memories … hope that the far left might work together constructively … that a new workers’ party was a go-er … that the paper I used to sell was improving … in preparation for the much-trailed Ashcroft polls of select Scottish constituencies. And? Put it like this. I chuckled at the numbers his fieldwork has turned up because the alternative was sticking my head in the oven.

They are bad, really very bad. Of 14 Labour-held seats polled, the party is set to lose them all bar one to a SNP tsunami. We’re not talking marginals here either. Take West Dunbartonshire, which is typical of the Ashcroft sample. At the 2010 general election Labour’s Gemma Doyle romped home with 25,905 votes, or 61%. The SNP trailed far in second with just under 8,500 to their name. Fast forward to 2015 and it’s carnage. Continue reading

Labour still odds-on not only to win election, but overall majority too

polling station pottyNow that the storm-in-a-teacup in the PLP orchestrated by 3 ne’er-do-well malcontents and gleefully inflated by the Tory tabloids is over, it is as well to assess the state of play before another bout of self-indulgent hysterics blows up. Before the PLP gets afflicted again with a turn of the jitters, look at the evidence.

The latest poll puts Labour on 32%, the Tories on 31%, UKIP on 14% and the LibDems trailing at 11%. This 1% Labour lead is dismissed as wafer-thin and fragile – and of course a 5-10% lead would be much more reassuring – but the significance of that 1% is widely misunderstood. If there were an election now with that polling distribution deployed across the country in a uniform swing, Labour would now have 55 more seats than the Tories and with 321 seats would be just 5 seats short of an overall majority. Not a bad position from which to start an election campaign! Continue reading

Poll demonstrates how little Scottish Labour is trusted to represent Scotland

Scottish Labour at LP conference 2014Yesterday we reported on the Ipsos MORI Scottish poll (for which full tables are now available) showing a 30% swing from Labour to the SNP since the 2010 general election. Today a YouGov poll (detailed tables here) carried out entirely after Johann Lamont’s resignationconfirms the dramatic threat to Labour in Scotland, albeit with a somewhat lower swing (19%). The effect is, according to Electoral Calculus, that Labour would retain 13 seats to 46 for the SNP whereas yesterday’s poll made it 4 to 54, a loss of 28 rather than 37 seats but still bad enough to ensure that Labour was incapable of winning the general election. Continue reading