Labour Party membership numbers have fallen by around 250 a day since Keir Starmer’s election as leader in April, newly published figures show.
Supporters of former leader Jeremy Corbyn are “leading an exodus from the party”, with the number of members falling by just under 57,000 people, or 10%, in the past seven months, The Times reports.
Membership numbers are now under 500,000 for the first time since Corbyn’s election, in 2016 - and the drop is “believed to have hastened in recent weeks” in the wake of the ex-leader’s suspension, the paper adds. Corbyn was reinstated last week after being booted out at the end of October following the publication of the Equality and Human Rights Commission report into anti-Semitism within the party.
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According to figures published by Labour, the party had 552,835 members eligible to vote in its leadership election in April. That figure dropped to 495,961 in the National Executive Committee (NEC) elections two weeks ago.
Allies of Corbyn, including his former shadow chancellor John McDonnell, have urged supporters to retain their membership. But as a figure on the left of the party told The Times, the drop “shows the level of discontent with Keir and the scale of the left-wing membership”.
The decision to suspend Corbyn “sparked backlash from party members, dozens of whom took to social media to announce they were quitting”, says the Daily Express, which adds that the sudden fall in membership is a “humiliation” for Starmer.
However, while Corbyn supporters are abandoning Starmer, the country as a whole appears to be impressed with the “new management” of Labour. A recent Statista poll of more than 1,600 people had Starmer leading Boris Johnson by ten points when respondents were asked who would make the better prime minister.
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