Shock poll for Corbyn's new left party

This should provoke panic amongst Starmer's goons

This is big news for the left - and will have Keir Starmer’s dead-behind-the-eyed goons spluttering.

A new poll by one of the main British pollsters - Ipsos - finds that 20% of British adults say they’re “very” or “fairly likely” to vote for a new left-wing party founded by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana.

And if this new left-wing party forms a pact with the Green Party, that figure rises to 31%. Bear in mind that Labour won their landslide victory last year with 33.7% of the vote, and the proposed left-wing party doesn’t even have a name yet, let alone exist.

Amongst voters aged 16 to 34, the figure drawn to the Left-Green alliance rises to 52% - that is, more than half.

You can see, based on the polling about policies, how that support could grow still further. Nearly half the public think the new left party’s policy proposals would deliver a positive change for the country, rising to 7 in 10 of Britons under 35.

Ipsos’s Director of UK Politics says:

These figures show that a new left-wing party led by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana has the potential to shake up British politics. A significant number of younger people are at least prepared to consider voting for it and a majority of those aged under 35 say they would consider voting for some kind of alliance between the new party and the Greens. Clear policies around change, the NHS, poverty and wealth taxes could be popular. Time will tell if the new party can turn this hypothetical appeal into real votes on a significant scale.

These findings are remarkable for a number of reasons. Jeremy Corbyn has been vilified like no other frontline politician in British history. There’s been no favourable coverage of the new Left party - it’s been sneered at, ridiculed and dismissed. That makes these results more impressive.

The poll comes only a year after Labour won a landslide victory, albeit on the lowest share of the vote of any triumphant party in history. The last Tory government was the most catastrophic in our democratic history, and the electorate was unquestionably desperate to get rid of it.

That a massive chunk of the electorate is already willing to abandon such a new government is testament to its catastrophic failure to offer any tangible change. Indeed Labour has repeatedly offered worse change - like hammering pensioners by scrapping the universal winter fuel payment, or seeking to drive hundreds of thousands of disabled people into poverty. They have continued, of course, to facilitate Israel’s genocide as it becomes ever more depraved.

Indeed, another survey by the pollsters YouGov underlines just how much the electorate has rejected the new government. 69% say they disapprove of Labour’s record, with just 13% approving. That means that Labour has an overall rating of minus 56. This is the same rating the Tories had just before the last election. But the Conservatives had been in power for 14 years, presiding over an unprecedented squeeze in living standards, collapsing public services, the Liz Truss catastrophe, the Boris Johnson catastrophe, multiple scandals, an increasingly despised Brexit deal, the worst political turmoil since World War II - we really could go on.

Starmer’s Labour has managed to make itself as unpopular in a year - as the Tories did after 14 year truly ruinous years.

There’s a few challenges here, of course, and that includes what sort of arrangement can be struck with the Greens. Zack Polanski is standing to be their leader, and has run an extremely impressive, energetic, insurgent campaign. He wants to firmly position the Greens as a party of the left - although that proposition faces a challenge from his leadership rivals, Ellie Chowns and Adrian Ramsay. They are MPs for two formerly Tory rural seats - which are completely unrepresentative of the Greens’ other target seats, which are overwhelmingly Labour-held urban seats. We’ll have to see if an alliance can actually be forged.

Starmer’s Labour have an obvious strategy they are going to deploy. They don’t have a chance of winning on hope, so they’ll go for fear - which is the prospect of Nigel Farage becoming prime minister. As things stand, the polling shows Reform UK are way ahead. This is in fact due to Labour’s dire failure, and in an electoral landscape which has splintered, what will matter is who manages to enthuse and mobilise the most voters - which clearly Starmer’s party cannot do.

The new party will need to have a clear strategy to deal with this fear campaign - including beginning by throwing huge resources at target seats where Reform UK aren’t in contention, and building out from there. But having clear messaging - for example, noting how Labour is raiding Farage’s rhetoric and policies, which is only boosting Reform UK - is going to be important.

Building an optimistic vision, too, will be another challenge. Voters really are fed up of despair and decline. But thanks to the combined disastrous efforts of the Tories and Labour, breaking through cynicism and resignation is going to be a challenge. It will be interesting to see how the party hammers away at a message of using Britain’s vast resources - currently locked in the bank accounts of a tiny few - to build a new sort of society.

The candidates the party selects will matter a lot. We saw from the successful independent candidates at the last election how important it was that they were embedded in their local communities. Given how Labour parachuted hacks into constituencies they had no connection with, this could be an important dividing line.

In a fractured electoral landscape, it’s not about winning 40% of the vote. It’s about mobilising enough voters to win a decisive number of seats - certainly enough to, for example, secure a change in the electoral system. First past the post currently works against new parties, on the grounds voters feel compelled to voter for lesser evils. Getting there means an unapologetic campaign of redirecting anger at elites, rather than migrants and refugees - and offering a hopeful vision that inspires communities long afflicted by stagnation and decline.

How the party communicates will matter given the hostility of the mainstream media. A big test will be the use of social media: the radical right has proven adept at using, say, TikTok with viral content that is snappy, to the point, clever and often witty. It could mean poster campaigns with provocative messages. Picking fights will surely matter, too - for example, promising to send those complicit in Israel’s genocide to jail. Why not put that on a poster with the faces of, say, Keir Starmer and David Lammy?

There’s a lot of young, savvy communicators out there who I’m sure they’ll snap up. They’re also helped by the fact that - unlike in 2015, when Corbyn became leader - the left has had time to develop ideas relevant to the world we’re in. There’s an army of progressive economists, academics and thinkers whose work is waiting to be harnessed.

By failing to offer an alternative to an economic system rigged only in favour of wealthy elites - and by facilitating genocide abroad - Labour has left a gaping vacuum in British politics. Let’s hope there’s something compelling to fill it.