Labour’s conference in Brighton might not have been the disaster some expected but it hasn’t done much for Jeremy Corbyn’s standing with the public. A new YouGov/Sun poll shows the Labour leader’s personal rating is minus eight — the lowest since polls of new opposition leaders began with Hugh Gaitskell in 1955. As the chart below shows, Corbyn is eight points lower than Michael Foot in 1980 and Iain Duncan Smith in 2001. This rating also puts him 34 points behind Ed Miliband in 2010.
This poll follows a trend: Ipsos MORI’s first tracker for Corbyn put him on minus three in their net satisfaction ratings — five points behind Foot in November 1980 and 22 points behind Miliband in October 2010. While these dire numbers would traditionally alarm political strategists, it’s unlikely the Corbynites will be particularly bothered.
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