Labour should be kicking Tory butt and no doubt would be without Corbyn as leader of the party. It appears he also has a Russia problem. There seems to be a lot of that going around these days.

Last edited Sun Feb 24, 2019, 10:45 AM - Edit history (1)

Corbyn won that leadership contest handily due to strong grassroots support from people joining Labour after he was first elected leader.

I don't wish to recycle the same arguments about him not being a very good leader of the opposition. I will say this though. The constituency I live in was narrowly retained by Labour at the 2017 election. However the local MP has defected to TIG and unless Labour dumps Corbyn they are set to lose the seat to the Tories at the next general election. Angela Smith's statement resigning from Labour is all that any party standing against Labour will need as ammunition.

The reaction of Corbyn fanboys to the split has been pretty dreadful to be honest. It's clear that their intentions are to drive those from other factions out of the Labour party. And that will make it impossible for Labour to build a broad base of support and work with others to get things done.

What polling there's been claims that without Corbyn at the helm, Labour would be polling better than the Tories. Whether it might be enough to give it a majority isn't clear.

The problem is that a leadership contest, especially at this stage, would widen the splits in Labour, likely be very ugly indeed, possibly even leading to mass defections, and whoever ended up as party leader would be highly unlikely to be universally attractive. So that "ideal-world" polling with a placeholder as leader probably doesn't indicate much.

I don't have much time at all for Corbyn for a number of reasons, but they have little to do with the allegations of "a Russia problem" etc. that the media, and even some on this forum, have focused on.