Your Party, fresh from that fraught launch in Liverpool last year, is about to find how fast its prospective voters have abandoned it. The number of Britons considering a vote for Jeremy Corbyn’s party was never higher than the number considering the Greens, but now the gap between the two, in favour of the Greens, has grown. YouGov polling in July found 28 per cent of Brits would consider voting for the Greens, and 18 per cent for Your Party. However, since then, the number of people considering Your Party has fallen to 12 per cent. And more worryingly still, 85 per cent of Your Party-curious voters would also consider voting for the Greens.
Considering voting for a party is, of course, very different to saying you will to vote for that party. Read it as “ceiling support”. Now that Your Party has been officialised into a proper party pollsters may start including it in voter intention surveys. The findings, however, are likely to be unedifying.
Earlier in the year I wrote that any polling about a Corbyn party would overstate its position in the polls, and my claim appears to have come to fruition. Speculative polling about a fantasy force always risks overstating its potential among the voters. In July, More in Common estimated Your Party to reach 8 per cent and overtake the Greens. Now it estimates Your Party to reach only half of that.
Your Party and the Greens are sipping from the same cup, and Your Party’s prospective voters are currently leaning towards the Greens. The success of Zack Polanski – already better known than Caroline Lucas ever was during her tenure as party leader – has effectively positioned the Greens as the primary contender to Labour on the left. The capacity for Your Party to win over prospective Green voters was predicated on the Greens sitting on under 10 per cent in the opinion polls. They’re now north of that, near 15 per cent, with a leader who has more public renown than any Green figure in recent history.
Zack Polanski may not get the nod on The Rest is Politics, but right now he has a favourability score of 18 per cent, up from 9 per cent two months’ prior, and among those under 50 that figure rises to 24 per cent. Unlike previous Green figures, Polanski is building a base – and voters are noticing. “Progressive Activists” – a strata of society coined by More in Common – rank Polanski higher than they do Jeremy Corbyn or Zarah Sultana.
These are the killer statistics. When even your coveted base has moved on from you, what are you left with? Nationally, Your Party is all but dead. Its voters have moved to another party.
But that isn’t to say it’s all over for Corbyn or Sultana, or any of their fellow travellers. There is still life in them yet. The question is: is its route to relevance what Your Party’s founders and activists want it to be? Local elections in Asian Muslim-heavy wards in London and Birmingham may bear boons for Your Party or Your Party-aligned independents, if indeed they are organised locally and don’t concede that wing of voting options to the Greens.
Polanski’s own favourability among Pakistani and Bangladeshi voters, for instance, is greater than it is among white British people. But he is dwarfed by the number favourable towards Corbyn, by far the most popular politician for this cohort. The former Labour leader has a favourability rate of 57 per cent compared to 41 per cent for Sultana and 31 per cent for Polanski. These are figures anyone would envy. The Greens are currently the most popular party with these groups, but that may only have been because Your Party wasn’t an option.
If Your Party aspires to carry on being something, it wouldn’t be a national force. But it would disproportionately find strength in Muslim-heavy areas. And in truth, that may bear it more MPs than its national vote total might justify. It’s severely limiting, but it’s not nothing. There’s life in Your Party yet, albeit… as a revived RESPECT party. Watch out, George Galloway.
[Further reading: Young women are radicalising]
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