I dug out the above polling over the weekend after getting into a discussion on Twitter with Owen Jones and others about my firm view that negative perceptions of Corbyn were the main driver of Johnson’s landslide at GE2019.

The Opinium election day poll sought to establish what was driving votes and the chart sets this out clearly region by region.

Cobynistas seem to have two things they want to talk about – how well their man did at GE2017 and how Starmer is failing to stop the Tories. You can understand the former given how perceptions changed dramatically between the two elections – the latter because the current leader is doing everything in his power to dissociate the party from the Corbyn wing.

For there is little doubt that Corbyn finally left the leadership with the party in a parlous state. The LAB vote dropped from 41% at GE2017 to 33% at GE2019 and the seat total was the lowest since 1935.

Corbyn was an easy target for the Tories – Starmer is proving to be very difficult. In the eighteen months of his leadership the Tories have yet to find an attack line that resonates. This, of course, is a man who was knighted by Cameron.

The Tories still have a poll lead but the latest Ipsos-MORI had it at just 3% – down 8.8% from the GE2019 results. A CON to LAB swing of 4.4% would make it mighty hard to achieve a majority or stay in power. Other polls have, of course, bigger leads but are still well down on the 11.8% at GE2019.

Mike Smithson