Based on Labour’s boasts about its membership levels, Jeremy Corbyn should have had a Christmas no.1 single about him; the Corbyn-supporting Momentum’s membership should be into six figures; and the CND, of which Corbyn is a vice-president, should be enjoying a membership revival to compare with its heyday during the Cold War.
None of this has happened.
Instead, Corbyn has suffered disastrous personal and party polling; election setbacks; a catastrophic relaunch; an MPs’ 4-to-1 no confidence vote against him; the retirement of some of Labour’s most experienced MPs to the back benches; and now two Labour MPs quitting Parliament within less than a month of each other rather than serve under him, with the promise of more to come.
Remarkably, despite all this, Corbyn’s position as leader of the Labour Party appears secure. His supporters argue his leadership is validated by the massive mandate given to him by the party members. Large numbers are reported to have joined Labour just to support him.
Labour politicians maintain that their party is now the largest in Western Europe due to this membership surge. But when Heat Street submitted twenty-one detailed questions about Labour’s membership recently, it refused to answer a single one, not even wanting to admit exactly how many members the party actually has.
Historically, Labour has overstated its membership numbers. For about a quarter of a century from the mid 1950s, membership was calculated at the constituency party level. The branches were ordered to provide a minimum statistic of 800 members, regardless of the truth. This was later increased to 1,000. In the early 1980s, this method of calculating membership was centralised. Labour’s official figure collapsed from 666,000 to 348,000 members overnight.
The party’s poor showing in the recent Richmond Park by-election suggests a discrepancy between its official figures and reality. Fewer people voted Labour than there were reported members in the local constituency party. If some people who were not party members voted Labour, the discrepancy is even greater. This is despite postal and proxy voting schemes designed to boost voter turnout. There are now fewer reasons than ever for party members not to vote Labour. Labour has provided no explanation for what happened in Richmond Park.
If Labour is not talking, other public indicators of a Corbyn-supporting membership can be used. The numbers are not supportive of a large influx based on Corbyn’s personal appeal.
The Momentum organisation was established as a continuity group for Corbyn’s first leadership campaign. If a large number of people joined Labour to support Corbyn, it would seem reasonable that they would also join Momentum. Heat Street submitted six detailed questions to Momentum about its membership and activities. In reply, a spokesman said:
“Momentum has over 20,000 members who play an active role in supporting the Labour Party to campaign in communities and put forward Labour’s ambitious plan for Britain.
As the overwhelming majority of Momentum’s members are also members of Labour they can, like any other Labour member, be elected to positions with their Constituency Labour Parties”
Momentum could not explain why this ‘enthusiasm’ it was ‘building on’ only resulted in less than 10% of Labour’s Corbyn supporters joining their group, nor could it provide any detail about how Momentum increases voter support for Labour. It did not make clear its policy on securing official positions in Constituency Labour Parties after their attempted takeover in Brighton, nor did it tell Heat Street how it coordinated its activities with Labour.
The surge to join Labour because of Corbyn has not reflected a parallel surge in a group styling itself as his staunchest supporters. Instead, Momentum is now following a policy to purge of some of its 20,000 members for ideological reasons.
There was a charity Christmas single launched last year by Robb Johnson and The Corbynistas, entitled ‘JC4PM 4 Me’. On YouTube, the single’s video and its ‘teaser trailer‘ were both viewed about 22,000 and 26,000 times respectively. The single failed to chart.
Jeremy Corbyn is a vice-president of CND. The most recent report and accounts for the year ending 31 December 2015 state that the group has subscription revenue of £314,000. Although the membership numbers are not disclosed, the average membership charge appears to be about £20, giving a total membership three months after Corbyn became Labour leader of about 15,000.
Corbyn-supporters may point to the packed meetings Corbyn addresses whenever he goes around the country. However given that such meetings are not audited, the people going to these meetings could be the same. Certainly, when showing the level of support at a meeting in Liverpool, some Corbyn supporters tweeted pictures of the celebrations of the Liverpool Football team when they won the Champions League back in 2005.
If Labour is confident in its membership figures, it should be able to answer some or all of Heat Street‘s 21 questions. Outside of the party, Labour’s polling support remains catastrophic at this point in the electoral cycle. Last week Labour lost a previously-safe council seat to the Liberal Democrats.
Rising support inside the party coinciding with falling support outside is paradoxical. When Tony Blair, Labour’s most successful leader, was in opposition, Labour enjoyed a membership surge as well as strong polling, not the latter figure moving in the opposite direction.
Public displays of support for Corbyn personally barely push to a total of 25,000 people across the country, or less than a tenth of the reported membership surge into Labour that is claimed, supposedly, because of his leadership.
Labour claims to offer British voters ‘straight-talking honest politics’. At the very least it should be able to provide straight answers to some straight questions about its member numbers. And yet it refuses to do so. Readers must draw their own conclusions as to the reason why.
