Reform voters prefer Corbyn to Starmer

It turns out Reform voters prefer Corbyn to Starmer in almost every way

People who are currently planning to vote for Reform opt for Jeremy Corbyn over Keir Starmer in almost every category.

A better way to defeat Reform

Merlin Strategy polling seen by Novara Media shows that 67% of voters for Nigel Farage’s party believe that Corbyn is “for working people”, compared to 33% who think that about Starmer.

A further 69% believe the MP for Islington “represents change”, while just 31% think Starmer does so. And 64% opt for Corbyn as “honest”, leaving 36% for Starmer.

Independent MP Zarah Sultana, who recently left the Labour Party and is co-founding a new left party with Corbyn, told Novara:

This polling blows a hole in Starmer’s strategy. He’s spent years chasing Reform voters, echoing their rhetoric, even mimicking Enoch Powell. And for what? They still prefer Jeremy Corbyn.

Starmer has long been aping Farage on immigration, casting it as entirely negative. And in May, the Labour leader faced accusations of following in Enoch Powell’s footsteps with a soundbite about an “island of strangers”.

The thing is, Farage voters have long preferred Corbyn over other figures in Labour. In 2015, polling showed that Corbyn was the most popular Labour leadership candidate among UKIP voters. They also ranked him highest for taking Labour in the right direction, being the most caring about the electorate, being the best leader and for having the greatest ideas about the UK’s future.

In the Merlin Strategy polling, 62% of Reform voters chose Corbyn as “strong”, compared to 38% for Starmer. And 61% said Corbyn “understands people like me”, while 39% opted for Starmer within that metric.

“Rigged economic system”

Corbyn told Novara:

The Labour government is here to appease Reform. We are here to defeat Reform… People have lost faith in a political system that shuts them out of the decisions that affect their daily lives. The great dividers want you to think that migrants and minorities are responsible for the problems in our society. They’re not. Those problems are caused by a rigged economic system that protects the interests of billionaires and corporations.

Corbyn and Sultana’s new party has already received around 600,000 sign ups in a matter of days. Shortly before, polling by Find Out Now revealed that the new party, which doesn’t even have a name currently (it will be decided by supporters), is polling neck and neck with Labour. Both parties are on 15%.

At the same time, Farage has been widely mocked for stating that he would fill a Reform cabinet with unelected corporate leaders should he become prime minister. He said the fact that MPs oversee departments is “ridiculous” because they do not have expertise. But people compared Farage’s assertion to his longstanding complaints about ‘unelected bureaucrats’ in the EU. Oh the irony.

On top of that, how would a Reform cabinet be held accountable if the people within it can’t be individually voted out?

It seems like Farage wants to complete neoliberalism and remove any difference between Big Business and government. That’s more of the same, not change. Meanwhile, Corbyn wants to put neoliberalism in a museum.

Featured image via the Canary

Comments 3

darkspeed says:

11 months ago

Surely, not really. Reform voters are anti-immigration, anti-immigrant, above all things. Nothing else “trumps” that. Starmer is just seen as fake, rightly so, and Corbyn for them would be fine if only he took Farage’s position on foreigners.

- Gnu says:
  
  11 months ago
  
  It is sad that voters who generally have so little, have become convinced their only path forwards is to have a boot stamping down on those with even less.
  
  I think we all know that a F’Rage regime would become even more unpopular than even Starmers, and possibly even quicker. Imagine when they want to go to the NHS, and discover it costs £20 to see a GP, and thousands to go for a needed op, while their kids are being conscripted to go die fighting Russians for NATO. Needless to say, that regime would soon reverse course on all the “freedoms” it allegedly currently champions, and would put the UK under the control of Palantir and Mossad. Goodbye any social liberties.
  
  Fascists will often lie before elections, with their actual plans laid out only for the billionaires backing them.
  
  Reform voters are convinced if only all the “migrants” can be removed, the UK will become wealthier and prosperous. Leaving the single market and FMOP merely collapsed the few industries we have left, and farming. And lo! “Bringing back control of ar borders” has increased the refugee problem sevenfold. Nothing like ‘Doing the same thing and expecting better results’ to illustrate insanity, is there?
  
  The mass corporate media will do everything in their power to promote F’Rage over Corbyn, and likely few voters of that persuasion will be swayed – but some will be. They just want a better life, ffs.
  
  Removing Romanians will not improve benefits, or maintain the NHS. And most ‘brown’ faced people are as english, welsh and scottish as anyone else who has lived here for 3 generations+.
  
  Perhaps Reform also wants to destroy the tottering university system – not by ending the disgraceful charges, but by preventing foreign students from enrolling, a Trumpian change currently causing the collapse of the American universities, and R&D. And banning non-white tourism, while they are at it.
  
  So the choice is true reform, and making Britain stand proud again, or continuing and accelerating its neolib policies and collapse; Corbyn or F’Rage.
  
  Sadly, the Reform voters simply don’t have media who can tell them that.
  
David Palmer says:

11 months ago

I’d prefer the hard stance on Israel, Trump and the very wealthy and bringing back our NHS and hopefully other services that Jeremy Corbyn would have than the weak, sniffling and creeping cap in hand approach of the likes of Starmer or Farage any day.