If you’re having trouble coping with the idea that Keir Starmer’s Labour Party – for all its posturing about opposing racism, opposing anti-Semitism – is in fact both anti-Semitic and racist, here’s some context.
Way back in 2017, just two years after Jeremy Corbyn was elected as leader of the Labour Party, the Tory-owned polling firm YouGov ran a survey on anti-Semitism in the main political parties.
The results will be surprising to anybody who believes Labour became more anti-Semitic under Mr Corbyn’s leadership: in fact, the reverse is the case.
The poll was commissioned by the Campaign Against Antisemitism, and This Writer’s experience of that organisation suggests that this was an attempt to find that Labour had become more anti-Semitic between 2015 (before Mr Corbyn was elected) and 2017.
But the graph shows that anti-Semitic attitudes among Labour members had not only fallen – they had fallen more sharply than in either the Conservative or Liberal Democrat parties:
Dorset Eye explains what the findings said to Mr Corbyn’s political opponents:
It meant a lot of work was required to tarnish the name of a long term human rights supporter and anti racist. This is when the establishment set to work.
That work involved attacking campaigners against racism and anti-Semitism as exactly the kind of people they opposed. It involved accusing Jewish people of being anti-Semites.
It involved vilifying Mr Corbyn and his supporters – including Diane Abbott; the woman who receives more racist hate mail than any other MP has now been accused of racism herself.
All on the basis of a lie – or at least, on a claim that could not be supported by the facts. Keir Starmer’s right-wingers in Labour have a lot to answer for.
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Nadhim Zahawi: it seems the co-founder of YouGov intimidated the polling firm into changing its methods – falsifying poll results – to make it seem the Tories were more popular than was true in 2017.
This is shocking and Nadhim Zahawi should be made to answer some hard questions.
It seems polling in 2017 showed Labour overtaking the Conservatives – until the Conservatives (Zahawi in particular) intimidated leading pollster YouGov.
A whistleblower on Dorset Eye explains:
The first thing I would do every morning is download the overnight data, and each day the gap just kept getting smaller and smaller. On the morning of the Manchester bombing, we actually had Labour pulling level, although the poll got spiked because the campaign rightly paused.
And then we released the MRP*. This was probably the worst possible idea. The MRP was actually showing exactly the same thing as our standard polls would have, but it was the first time anybody had said “hung parliament”.
Nadhim Zahawi called up the CEO and said he would call for his resignation if he was wrong.
This meant our polling and coverage was a lot worse for the rest of the campaign. We did a fantastic debate poll in the hours following the debate that Corbyn took part in. The results were stark – Corbyn won by a country mile, and one in four Tory voters thought he was best. But despite having written the story and designed the charts, we were banned from releasing the story because it was too positive about Labour.
Similarly, there were a few “minor” methodology changes for the final poll which increase the Tory lead. This was done after pressure from high-ups (and despite protests from those of us who thought it wasn’t ok).
Was the 2017 election rigged because people were influenced by falsified opinion polls?
The evidence here suggests it was. We might never have had Tory Brexit, Boris Johnson and all the horrors of the last five years if YouGov’s founder had left its employees to do their job. And will you ever trust an opinion poll again?
*MRP stands for multilevel regression and post-stratification. This is a statistical method that produces predictions for small geographic areas even if a poll had few respondents from that constituency. Instead, census data, such as the age and income distributions of voters in that area, is put into the model with the national survey data.
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Wrong again: Starmer’s insistence that Labour is anti-Semitic has created a huge backlash, with 70 per cent of members saying there is no major problem.
You have to laugh. In the week after the Jerusalem Declaration that provides a new definition of anti-Semitism to stop it being confused with criticism of the hard right-wing Israeli government, the Likud-supporting Jewish Chronicle accuses Labour Party members of delusion.
It is reporting that a YouGov survey has found 70 per cent of current Labour members – that’s the people who are left after Keir Starmer and David Evans’s purges – don’t believe the party has a major problem with anti-Semitism.
There’s a good reason for that: the Labour Party does not – and never did have – a major problem with anti-Semitism. That attitude has been found within the party – but on a smaller scale than among the UK’s population generally and a much smaller scale than in right-wing parties like the Conservatives.
Hacks like the JC‘s Lee Harpin keep carping on about it because they have an anti-left wing political agenda of their own, it seems.
Consider the language Harpin uses in his story:
An exclusive poll for the JC reveals a party that remains in denial about the scale of the crisis, with large numbers still in thrall to Jeremy Corbyn.
There’s no evidence in the poll itself of any kind of denial at all, and agreement with Jeremy Corbyn’s opinion is not blind servitude to him.
The story goes on to say that, “in echoes of Mr Corbyn’s claim that the issue had been ‘dramatically overstated’, almost half (46 per cent) thought the scale of the allegations were ‘exaggerated’, while 24 per cent said the party did not have a serious problem.
Harpin editorialises (which is highly unprofessional among reporters who claim to be writing the news rather than opinion pieces):
Significant support for the toxic former leader remains, with a striking 72 per cent of members insisting that he should not be expelled from the party.
No evidence is put forward to explain why Corbyn should be considered toxic – unless it is his accurate point that anti-Semitism claims had been “dramatically overstated” and “exaggerated”.
Almost a third of those polled, 29 per cent, thought that Sir Keir was doing a worse job than Mr Corbyn, who quit in 2020 after leading Labour to its worst general election defeat since 1935.
There’s a debatable claim! Corbyn lost a lot of seats but still won more votes than Tony Blair in 2005, Gordon Brown in 2010 and Ed Miliband in 2015. And that’s (allegedly) fighting the huge drag factor of Labour Party officers working to ensure that the Conservatives won.
The poll also disclosed that hostility towards Israel remains rampant amongst Labour’s rank-and-file, with almost half of respondents (49%) agreeing with the suggestion that Israel is an “apartheid state” .
It is. Palestinians are treated as an underclass by law – a law passed by the Likud government under Benjamin Netanyahu. Of course, this doesn’t mean Labour members think Israel will always be an apartheid state. South Africa used to be and isn’t any more so there’s always hope. It isn’t an anti-Semitic attitude to oppose the bigotry of that nation’s current government.
The revelations highlight the scale of the challenge that still faces Sir Keir, who pledged on his first day as leader to tear antisemitism out by the roots and restore trust with the Jewish community.
More accurately, they show that, rather than restore trust with the Jewish community (that was lost when Labour started paying attentions to the rantings of its pro-Likud Israel critics), Starmer has lost the trust of Labour Party members.
He will never regain it.
Starmer nailed his colours to the mast when he made his grovelling apology for anti-Semitism in Labour on his first day in office. He has spent his time since then pursuing, suspending and expelling party members under the pretext of anti-Semitism, when their real crime – as far as he is concerned – is Socialism.
But Labour is a Socialist party. It’s right there on the membership card. If Starmer disagrees with that, he should not be a member, let alone a leader. Nor should any of his cronies who take his side.
He will lose many seats in the local government elections next month because he simply can’t understand that anybody who supports the policies he likes will vote for the party that originally put them forward – the Tories.
His reliance on watered-down Conservatism, and his insistence on pursing a crusade against an enemy that doesn’t exist in any meaningful form will kill Labour as a political movement.
People have started to believe that this has always been his intention.
So, ultimately, Harpin’s hack-piece has the issue arse-backwards (as usual).
Starmer’s challenge isn’t ridding the Labour Party of anti-Semitism; Labour’s challenge is ridding itself of Starmer.
“Blatantly Backing Conservatives”: but is the BBC irredeemable or could it be restored to its role as the greatest impartial news provider in the world – if the Tories don’t privatise it first?
Did you enjoy a lot of TV over Christmas? Did Worzel Gummidge tickle you? Or was Dracula more to your taste? How about that classic-with-a-new-face, Doctor Who?
BBC output – and not just drama – appears to have won the Christmas ratings war, but the corporation itself is in danger of being destroyed by politicians.
Boris Johnson said in the run-up to the general election that he thought the BBC in its current format – as a public service broadcaster supported by a licence fee paid by all television users – has had its day.
This Writer finds that a strange way to repay the organisation that has done more to re-elect the Conservatives than any other. Around 70 per cent of the UK gets its news from the BBC and a high proportion of those people let its newscasters tell them what to think.
The BBC’s election coverage was hugely controversial; there is a large body of opinion that the Corporation went far too easy on Boris Johnson’s Conservatives, despite policy positions that are, frankly, completely whacko.
In contrast, BBC presenters were almost feral in their reaction to Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party, whose policies – should they ever be discussed – were actually far more in tune with the thoughts of the nation.
There are many possible reasons for this behaviour by a broadcaster that should have been impartial – especially considering the fact that it relies on our money for its existence.
But I don’t think that’s why YouGov has just released a poll saying most people want to scrap the licence fee.
YouGov is the Tory polling organisation. It was set up by Nadhim Zahawi and another prominent Tory, and has always existed in the shadow of its founders’ political ambitions.
So, following up on Mr Johnson’s comments, it seems likely to This Writer that YouGov has polled the people most likely to support the end of the licence fee, in order to produce these results.
Remember: polls are published in order to tell you what to think, not to tell you what other people think.
The Tory plan would be to turn the BBC into a subscription-only or advertising-funded service, making it far less capable of providing the services it currently offers.
Then private, billionaire-owned companies could rush in to fill the gap – especially in news programming – with pro-Tory propaganda.
And the BBC itself could be taken over by privateers, leaving the logo only to mislead us into thinking that it’s the same as it ever was.
You know – like the Tories are doing with the NHS.
Labour offered reform of the BBC to eliminate political interference but you (or your fellow voters) didn’t want that.
If you lose the best broadcaster in the world because of the election result, I hope you know where to place the blame.
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Keir Starmer: does anybody really think Labour would benefit from a Centrist/Blairite leader like he would be?
‘Centrist’ Keir Starmer, who has taken much of the blame for Brexit policies that are thought to have lost Labour the general election, is now the top candidate to become the party’s new leader, according to a poll that should not be trusted at all.
Why shouldn’t it be trusted, you ask? Because it was produced by YouGov, the polling organisation co-founded by current Conservative MP Nadhim Zahawi.
Who would have an interest in getting public support behind a leader likely to alienate Labour’s more left-wing supporters? I’d suggest that a Tory-run polling organisation would.
And it is grossly misleading as the election won’t happen for several months and not all candidates have thrown their hats into the ring.
The poll has been picked up by the Tory media (obviously) – and even a few left-wing outlets have mentioned it.
But the reaction generally seems resoundingly negative:
Sir Starmer is the anointed one. You gov has spoken. Riding to the rescue on his charger the goodly knight will save the Labour party from those nasty lefties then proceed to ride off into oblivion and the black hole of centrism where parties go to die
The left haven't really got behind anyone yet and sadly some seem to have wrongly analysed our GE defeat. Others have had enough of the fight and want what they perceive to be the safest, dullest leader in history. That's why Starmer is probably leading. Hopefully it will change.
I can still hear the plummy voice of the Putney man that opened the door to me when I was on the #labourdoorstep and said: “I couldn’t possibly vote for Corbyn or that Marxist maniac McDonnell. But get Keir Starmer in the leadership and I’ll vote Labour again.”
And while I agree that some sort of united front with general progressive forces will be needed on national level, conceding on the ideological direction of the party after all these years’ work would be a travesty!
He appeals to me because he, at least, knows where to find Boris Johnson:
In the gutter with the other vermin.
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Shortly after YouGov – often labelled a Tory puppet pollster – claimed Labour was fourth-placed in the opinion polls, even though it was only six points behind the Conservatives, the party came on top of a new poll by our most accurate polling firm.
Survation put Labour’s support at 29 per cent – a whopping 11 per cent above its placing in the YouGov poll. The Conservatives were languishing on 23 per cent, a point below where YouGov put them.
NEW: General Election voting intention in England, Scotland and Wales, 10th – 11th July 2019:
“Today’s 18, 19 and 20-year-olds were not allowed to vote in 2016. 84 per cent of them want to remain in the EU,” tweeted Labour’s David Lammy.
“To ignore these young voices, who have the most to lose from Brexit, would be nothing less than a betrayal,” he added – and This Writer agrees.
Theresa May [has been] warned that Brexit will “betray an entire generation of young people” as a new poll showed teenagers who have now gained the vote back staying in the EU by more than five to one.
The YouGov survey found that 84 per cent of 18, 19 and 20-year-olds — too young to take part in the June 2016 referendum — support remaining in the European Union, with just 16 per cent opting for Leave.
People aged 20 to 24 who were able to take part in the Brexit referendum voted by three to one to Remain.
The analysis suggested the Leave majority of 2016 would be wiped out in January 2019, two months before the UK is due to quit the EU. The calculations were also based on elderly people, who mostly voted for Leave, dying.
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A new poll published by YouGov make[s] grim reading for May.
Fewer people think she is competent:
In June, 53% of people said they thought she was competent. That is now down 11 points to 42%. The number of people who think she is incompetent is up from 32% to 41%. That includes 15% of Tory supporters and 26% of Leave voters.
A majority of voters think she is indecisive:
The number of people who think she is indecisive has risen from 50% to 52%. Among Tory voters, a huge 39% have that view.
People are losing their trust in her:
In June, a majority (52%) of voters said May was trustworthy, while just 31% said she was untrustworthy. There has been a huge reversal in this measure over the last 3 months and now 44% find her untrustworthy, compared 35% who trust her.
There is a big age gap on this measure, with people under 50 most likely not to trust her.
Most voters think she is weak:
After disproving her own “strong and stable” slogan during the general election, 52% of voters now view her as weak compared to just 28% who see her as strong. That compares to 46% and 33% respectively in June.
Despite the hard Brexit line she has adopted, more Leave voters see her as strong than week – by 40% to 39%.
Fewer people like her:
There has been a marked 8 point swing in the wrong direction for her in terms of likability since June. 46% of people dislike her now compared with 40% then and 30% like her compared with 32% then.
A huge 71% of 18-24 year olds dislike her. Only among the over 65s does she have a positive rating on this measure.
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Jeremy Corbyn attracted thousands of people to hear him speak on the doorstep of the Conservative Party conference, while ‘moderates’ in his own party were briefing against him in the Tory press.
YouGov has published the results of a poll carried out among what it calls “members of the Labour selectorate” to gauge current feelings about Labour, its policies and leaders – but This Writer is wondering whether the media are being selectIVE about the figures they’re quoting.
YouGov polled 1443 members of the Labour “selectorate” – party members, registered supporters and affilated supporters able to vote in the leadership contest, and people coming back to Labour who didn’t support the party in the general election – and the tables break the results down by various categories, as well as comparing what the “selectorate” thinks with the views of Labour voters and GB adults generally.
It’s also worth paying attention to a VP commenter who wrote today (November 24): “My experience is that YouGov carefully choose who they will ask. This means one is not invited to take part in some polls as YouGov are pretty sure of your answer, and they don’t want a rusult that will upset their sponsor.” The sponsor in this case is the Tory-supporting Times newspaper, owned by Rupert Murdoch.
The Graun focused on the figures for Labour members “for simplicity’s sake”. That’s all very well, but isn’t the effect on the wider public also interesting? Surely it is more important at a time when opponents of the Corbyn leadership are briefing against him in the right-wing press, in an attempt to turn public opinion against a leader who was elected with an overwhelming mandate?
So, for example, while the number of Labour members who think Corbyn is doing well totals 66 per cent, isn’t it more interesting that 74 per cent of those polled, who didn’t vote Labour in the general election, also think he is doing well?
Corbyn is unlikely to become prime minister, according to half of Labour members – but that opinion is reflected by only 40 per cent of people who didn’t vote Labour in the election. Does this indicate that “floating” voters are floating in Corbyn’s direction? Remember, it’s early days yet.
And the answer to the very next question is fascinating. If Corbyn remains Labour leader, only 41 per cent of Labour members think Labour won’t win the election. It’s basically the same question as the last – Corbyn would still become prime minister – but nine per cent fewer people thought Labour would lose. What does that tell us? Almost 2/3 of people who voted for Corbyn – 64 per cent – said Labour would win, along with 57 per cent of people who didn’t vote Labour in the general election – another shift towards Corbyn.
The Graun points out that, among those who voted for non-Corbyn candidates in the leadership contest, 79 per cent think Corbyn is unlikely ever to become prime minister. Isn’t that to be expected? Isn’t that why Labour intolerants – sorry, sorry, ‘moderates’ – are briefing against him in the press, rather than taking concerns through the proper channels – to increase this likelihood?
Should Corbyn lead Labour into the next election? 56 per cent of Labour members said yes, alongside a whopping 76 per cent of those who didn’t vote Labour at the last election.
Asked who should replace Corbyn if he did step down, it is significant that more Labour members said they didn’t know (16 per cent) than supported anybody except Andy Burnham. His lead, with 19 per cent, disappears when the votes of those who aren’t full members is considered (19 per cent of them didn’t know either), and is annihilated when the votes of those who didn’t support Labour at the election are taken into account (24 per cent of them didn’t know).
On policy, the ‘moderates’ take a hammering. These are the people who have repeatedly claimed that Labour must put forward policies that are designed to win elections, no matter whether they correspond with their own principles or those of the party as a whole. Only 32 per cent – less than a third – of everybody polled agreed with them. 56 per cent said it is better for a major political party to put forward policies it really believes in – rising to 67 per cent of those who didn’t vote Labour in May.
To This Writer, such a result indicates that a party that believes in the policies it puts forward won’t lose elections – as suggested by the question. People prefer politicians they can trust not to tell lies.
The response to the next question also wipes out the Corbyn-haters. Asked if he had moderated his personal opinions since he became leader – against a background of media critics and Labour ‘moderates’ claiming he has u-turned left, right and centre – a clear majority said he had not done so, in all polled groups.
So the propaganda war against Corbyn is a total failure – and is in fact increasing his support base, rather than encouraging people to desert him.
However, a clear majority also believes the Shadow Cabinet is divided – 79 per cent. Considering the level of support for Corbyn, this can only indicate disapproval of the Labour MPs who have been briefing against him in the media – and, sure enough, 55 per cent of members blame MPs opposed to Corbyn for the division, rising to 69 per cent of those who didn’t support Labour in the general election (the people Labour needs to recapture).
The next question referred to the reselection issue. Some Corbyn supporters have been criticised over their demands for his critics to be deselected, due to what they see as clear betrayals of the Labour leader and the party as a whole (the argument is that any public display of dissent encourages people to think Labour is split and is not capable of forming a strong government). Should MPs be made to seek re-selection before every election, or should this happen only if they haven’t done “a reasonable job”?
Answer: Full party members, “not full members”, Corbyn supporters and those who didn’t support Labour in the election demanded re-selection procedures; supporters of the other candidates in the leadership contest disagreed. What does that tell you about Corbyn’s critics? Doesn’t it say they want to avoid the democratic judgement of their constituency parties?
Asked to define attributes they associate with Mr Corbyn, the majority of all those polled said he was principled, honest, courageous and shared their political outlook. Labels such as “deluded”, “indecisive”, “weak” or “untrustworthy” were comprehensively rejected.
But it is true that few were willing to commit when asked whether he would lead Labour to victory or defeat, with only around 30 per cent supporting either suggestion.
What we’re seeing, in a nutshell, is a Labour leader who has the support of the majority of Labour members – and is winning over those who did not vote Labour at the last election.
This group is by far the most enthusiastic about Mr Corbyn’s leadership, indicating a huge influx of new or returning Labour voters who have been energised by the Corbyn leadership.
Contrast this with what YouGov’s Peter Kellner said about the poll: “Mr Corbyn’s supporters seem to know that they they are out of touch with the wider public, but don’t mind.”
Not true. The more the public knows about Corbyn, the more the public supports him.
That is what Kellner’s own poll suggests – and a weak attempt at spin can’t erase it.
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Oh. My word. Vox Political readers won’t make the mistakes recounted here, being far too well-read for that. However, it is bad enough that other people are thinking these things. Alex Little explains:
Here’s an interesting poll finding from Yougov this week. They asked people the question “How well would you say you understand what people mean when they talk about the government’s deficit?” In answer, 69% said they had a very clear or fairly clear understanding. Not bad then. It’s talked about every day by politicians, so it’s good people understand what it means.
Not so fast though. Yougov followed up by asking “Which of the following do you think best describes the government’s deficit?” The majority (51%) thought “The total amount of money the government has borrowed” rather than the more correct description (“The amount of extra money that the government borrows each year”), which was only picked by 31%.
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