Labour’s love lost

Just as it seems that Labour has reached the bottom of the abyss, Jeremy Corbyn and his party somehow manage to find a new low. The latest nationwide poll puts them at 24 per cent, trailing the Tories by 16 points. No wonder Labour MPs look so boot-faced around Parliament, and an increasing number are hunting for jobs elsewhere. If a general election were called now, the Conservatives would win a huge majority. Labour would be further than ever from power, arguably even finished as a major parliamentary force.

Polls are not rock-solid indicators of future electoral success or failure, but Labour’s ratings are so abysmal as to suggest a party facing an existential crisis. Labour’s support in Scotland is now as low as 14 per cent, which may lead to another humiliation in the coming council elections. Corbyn’s approval ratings are extraordinarily bad. Any which way you cut the demographic — old and young, Leave and Remain, northern and southern, male and female, those who voted Labour at the last election and those who didn’t — Labour’s leader has a net negative rating, usually a big one.