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24 January 2019

Financial Times: Jeremy Corbyn’s popularity hurt by Brexit stance, poll finds


Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s reputation with voters has taken a severe knock since the Brexit referendum, according to polling by research agency BritainThinks.

In a survey of more than 2,000 people, 69 per cent said they believed that on Brexit Mr Corbyn was “more concerned about party politics than the national interest”.

That compared with how 45 per cent thought the same about prime minister Theresa May.

In the BritainThinks survey, 61 per cent of people said their view of Mr Corbyn had worsened since the EU referendum in June 2016, while only 10 per cent thought it had improved. The corresponding figures for Mrs May were more favourable.

Critics of Mr Corbyn, a longstanding Eurosceptic, accuse him of having a deliberately vague Brexit policy to try to maximise support for Labour.

Deborah Mattinson, founding partner of BritainThinks, said that in focus groups organised by the research agency over the past two years voters had often said that Mr Corbyn was someone who “sticks to his principles” and “tells it how it is”.

But now Mr Corbyn’s actions and words in parliament do not feel like they are “driven by principle”, according to voters in two focus groups held by BritainThinks in Slough last week.

These people were not clear how his backing for a general election— after Mrs May’s EU withdrawal agreement was resoundingly rejected by the House of Commons this month — would solve Brexit. [...]

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