If Corbyn continues he’ll be remembered as the selfish bed-blocker who put himself ahead of LAB’s survival
Front cover of latest edition of Prospect
The polls/leader ratings, by-elections and the locals all pointing in one direction
My heading and the front cover of the latest Prospect might appear harsh but how else can you describe Labour’s predicament? It has a leader who is electorally toxic who is kept in place by a party membership that remains broadly supportive. Certainly if there was another leadership election and Corbyn stood it is hard to see how he could be beaten as this week’s LAB members’ polling has shown.
Prospect Magazine is right to highlight Labour’s plight in the way it does. Parties can totally collapse as we saw what happened to Scottish Labour at GE2015 – down from holding 41 Scottish seats to just one. Maybe we could be edging for something similar south of the border.
Meanwhile polls are becoming even more awful for the party, Corbyn’s personal ratings remain poor and a fortnight ago it suffered the almost unprecedented loss of a Westminster by-election to the governing party. On top of that each week its local election performance gets worse with the Tories now picking up seats in Labour heartlands.
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All this means is that the UK does not have a credible opposition at a most critical time resulting in Mrs May’s government being almost totally unfettered.
The first step for LAB is for its bed-blocking leader to stand aside. If he doesn’t he risks going down in history as the man who destroyed the movement.