Ever since he became leader of the UK Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn has faced bitter attacks from the "left-wing" establishment, the press, and his own party, despite his repeated, unprecedented landslide victories in party leadership races.
As Labour infighting (combined with missteps and systematic bias in the press, for example, the dramatic underreporting of Corbyn's anti-Brexit campaign) have made Corbyn into something between a running joke and a whipping boy in UK politics, the actual party manifesto for the upcoming election was leaked — possibly as sabotage by party establishment insiders.
After the leak, the hard-right Daily Mirror commissioned a poll to find out just how much everyone hated Corbyn's manifesto, only to discover that there is broad, deep support for Corbyn's platform, from renationalising the railways to banning "zero-hours" contracts and raising the minimum wage, while taxing the rich and building subsidised council housing for working people — what's more, Corbyn's platform is far more popular than Tory leader Theresa May's, which is full of gifts to the super-rich like reintroducing fox-hunting and raising the retirement age.
That's the good news. The bad news is that Labour is still polling low, and many voters still perceive Corbyn as "unelectable" — the most self-fulfilling prophecy imaginable. As for me, I'm glad to finally have a party of principle to vote for that has a national reach and a meaningful left-wing agenda, after decades of neoliberal, Blairite, authoritarian, warmongering, banker-cosseting New Labour.
The findings are in stark contrast to the reception Labour's leaked manifesto has received in the press. Several leading newspapers accused Corbyn of putting forward a "far-left" agenda which would "take Britain back to the 1970s" and serve as a "suicide note" for the party.However, while Labour's individual policies are popular, the public appear to doubt the party's ability to deliver them.
51% of respondents told Comres that the Conservatives had "more realistic and well thought out policies than Labour" as opposed to 31% who thought that Labour's policies were more realistic.
And despite backing Labour policies overall, 47% of respondents said they were "less likely to vote Labour" after hearing their policies than they had been before, as opposed to 34% who said the opposite.
New poll finds huge public support for Jeremy Corbyn's manifesto promises
[Adam Bienkov/Business Insider]
(via Naked Capitalism)
