Labour Crumbles: Voters See Long-Bailey as ‘Jeremy in a Skirt’, Corbyn ‘Unpatriotic’

SALFORD, ENGLAND - SEPTEMBER 02: Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and shadow Business secretary
Anthony Devlin/Getty Images
Victoria Friedman

More than six in ten voters have said that Labour deserved to lose the election, with respondents to a poll criticising Jeremy Corbyn’s lack of patriotism and his sympathies for known terrorists, while mocking prospective party leader Rebecca Long-Bailey as “Jeremy in a skirt”.

Lord Michael Ashcroft’s autopsy of Labour’s General Election historic loss, Diagnosis of Defeat, published on Monday revealed that 62 per cent of the 10,107 voters polled in Great Britain said that the left-wing party deserved to lose, including almost two-thirds of Labour voters who backed another party and 95 per cent of those that defected to the Conservatives.

However, after its worst defeat since 1935 and amidst antisemitism and leadership scandals, a far smaller proportion of the 1,073 Labour voters polled last month agreed, with just one in five saying the party deserved to lose. Seventy-three per cent said the party did not deserve to lose, that proportion rising to 87 per cent of those who voted for Jeremy Corbyn in the 2016 leadership election.

–Labour Defectors Felt Isolated and Patronised by Liberal Elites–
Lord Ashcroft also held 18 focus groups with Labour defectors. Writing in the report, the pollster said that he found “very few” former Labour voters who had regretted backing another party in the December 2019 election, with even those who had not voted Conservative saying “they were relieved at the outcome”.

“The general public were treated by people in parliament as though they were stupid and didn’t know what they were voting for. I’m pleased we’ve got a direction and the government is going to do what people wanted,” one former Labour voter said.

The former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party remarked on how former Labour voters felt they were treated by Corbyn’s party. He said: “As far as many of these former supporters were concerned, then, the Labour Party they rejected could not be trusted with the public finances, looked down on people who disagreed with it, was too left-wing, failed to understand or even listen to the people it was supposed to represent, was incompetent, appallingly divided, had no coherent priorities, did not understand aspiration or where prosperity comes from, disapproved of their values and treated them like fools.”

Defectors also felt that Labour was no longer the party for the working class, but rather for students, young people, and the unemployed. Others responded it was the party of the middle-class liberal elites from London “who go on marches to get rid of Brexit”.

–Not Wanting Corbyn as Prime Minister Was the Single Biggest Motivation for Defectors–

The focus groups were also particularly scathing of Corbyn, with the report finding that “not wanting Jeremy Corbyn to be Prime Minister was the single biggest motivation for Labour defectors”.

The 70-year-old socialist was labelled as “not patriotic” and anti-Royalist, with concerns raised over his “sympathies with Hezbollah and the IRA”, while one said: “He wasn’t someone I would trust my country to be run by.”

–Jeremy Corbyn in a Skirt–
Opinions of his future replacement were on the whole not much better amongst Labour members. While Keir Starmer faired best in the polls for current Labour supporters — who described him as “competent”, “up to the job”, and “potential election winner” — his female opponents Lisa Nandy, Emily Thornberry, and Rebecca Long-Bailey were seen as either, weak, arrogant, or Corbyn clones.

Lisa Nandy was almost equally described as “out of her depth” as “likeable”. Thornberry, who was forced to resign her shadow cabinet post in 2014 after tweeting a disparaging comment about ‘white-van’ drivers, was seen as “arrogant” and “smug”.

While one voter told the polling company that Corbyn’s heir-apparent Long-Bailey “would be Jeremy in a skirt”.

Paper ballots for the election of Labour’s new leader will be sent out to Labour members on February 21st, with the winner announced on April 4th.

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