One in four Labour members could back Jeremy Corbyn’s party at the next general election.
Twenty-eight per cent of those surveyed said they were considering supporting the former Labour leader’s new left-wing, pro-Gaza movement, which is set to be launched formally in the autumn.
Corbyn announced the venture along with fellow MP Zarah Sultana in July, aiming to win over disaffected Labour voters. The pair will be heartened by polling from Survation, which shows the majority of Labour members want Sir Keir Starmer’s party to change direction.
Some 59 per cent said Starmer should pursue more left-wing policies, 2 per cent said he should move to the right, and 35 per cent thought he should move faster to deliver his current agenda.
While 28 per cent of members said they would potentially back Corbyn’s movement, a majority (51 per cent) thought a new party could split the left and boost the chances of a Conservative or Reform-led government.
About 14 per cent thought the new party would not have any impact on Labour’s chances, while 12 per cent said the only real risk was to the Green Party. Labour Party members tend to hold stronger political views than the parliamentary party, and so are more likely to be left-wing than MPs.
Corbyn welcomed the findings of the poll, which was conducted among 1,021 Labour members this month and commissioned by the LabourList website.
He said: “For too long, people have been denied a real political choice. Not any more: 700,000 people have already signed up to build a real alternative to inequality, poverty and war. One based on public ownership, wealth redistribution, housing justice and peace. This is just the beginning. We are an unstoppable movement and we are never going away.”
Sultana and Corbyn will officially launch their movement this autumn
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A Labour source defended the party’s performance and said Starmer was focused on creating “a fairer Britain for working people”.
Planning is under way for the official launch of Corbyn’s movement, which remains without a name but has been referred to by organisers as “Your Party”.
A location and date for the launch conference to formally establish the party along with leadership elections are still not confirmed. However, the founding process is being stewarded by Corbyn, Sultana and four other MPs elected last July who stood as independents on an explicitly pro-Gaza platform.
Diane Abbott, MP for Hackney North & Stoke Newington, said on Thursday that she advised Corbyn not to launch a new political party because she felt that it would struggle to succeed under the first-past-the-post system.
Diane Abbott has been friends with Corbyn for years
TOLGA AKMEN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
She told the Edinburgh International Book Festival: “There were people around Jeremy encouraging him to set up a new party and I told him not to. It’s very difficult under the first-past-the-post system for a new party to absolutely win. If it wasn’t first past the post then you can see how a new party could come through, but I understand why he did it.”
Abbott, who said last month that she would not be joining Corbyn’s party, despite the pair being longtime friends, describe Sultana as a lovely person who is full of energy. She added that the party could get votes from people who were not necessarily left-wing but were disappointed by Labour’s actions over the past year.
It emerged on Thursday that Labour has lost almost 200,000 members in the past five years. Figures published in the party’s annual accounts showed that it shed another 37,215 members last year, or about 10 per cent.
It means Labour’s membership was 333,235 at the end of last year, well down from its peak under Corbyn’s leadership of 532,046 at the end of 2019.
However, Reform UK’s accounts also showed a surge in party members, generating fees of £4.3 million. Donations to the party also rose from £1.3 million in 2023 to £5.8 million last year.
Some Labour figures have spoken out over the summer about the party’s first year in office. Sir Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, said the party needed to “really pick things up” after a “tough” 12 months.
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Ian Byrne, the MP for Liverpool West Derby, this week criticised planned cuts to disability benefits and the winter fuel allowance that the government U-turned on.
He also urged the government to scrap the two-child benefit cap, telling The Big Issue magazine: “We just need to stop making political decisions which are suicidal on the doorstep.”
Sultana has compared the founding of the new left-wing political party to the creation of the NHS and extension of the right to vote to women. She said there had been “a lot of unofficial local groups” formed organically since the new party was promised, but that a “unitary” party structure was necessary.
“Otherwise it won’t be a cohesive project that unites the existing spectrum of movements and struggles,” she said in an interview with the New Left Review.
Sultana said the new party should not be led only by the six MPs, adding that, given five of them are male, it would risk being a “boys’ club”.