Labour leader less popular than his unpopular party in north-east former ‘heartland’ seat
New polling of Hartlepool voters by Survation has shot down the already-feeble arguments of Keir Starmer and his supporters as they try to get their excuses in early for the defeat they and political pundits expect in Thursday’s by-election in the north-east former Labour stronghold.
The endless attempts to blame former leader Jeremy Corbyn fell apart as with the new Survation poll’s suggestion – which happens to coincide with 5,000 young people chanting for Jeremy Corbyn in Liverpool – that Keir Starmer is less liked and trusted by Hartlepool residents than the already poor standing of his party.
Survation found that only 31% of Hartlepool people feel favourably toward Labour, compared to 46% for the Tories – and 45% think unfavourably of Starmer’s party:
But only 22% have a favourable view of Keir Starmer – and 40% have an unfavourable one, while 9% said they had never heard of him:
When it came to who would make the best prime minister, the numbers were even worse: only 19% think Starmer would be better than Johnson – and Starmer was several points behind Mr ‘Don’t know’, no doubt a reflection on Starmer’s abstention addiction and lack of opposition:
These numbers are even worse when compared to Labour’s performance in the 2019 general election, when Starmer’s supporters would have us all believe the nation soundly rejected Jeremy Corbyn and left policies.
In 2019, Labour received just under 38% of the vote – while according to Survation, only 33% of voters intend to put a cross in the box for the party now – and more than one in four Labour voters in 2019 now say they will not support Starmer’s party.
While these numbers are unsurprising to the honest folk who know Labour crashed in 2019 primarily because of the party’s referendum u-turn of which Starmer was the principal architect, they shoot to pieces the feeble claims that Labour is doing badly because of its former leader rather than its current one.
This will not, of course, prevent Starmer and his increasingly desperate supporters from trying to play the Corbyn card, of course. But it does mean they’ll demonstrably be talking bollocks when they do.
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