More people have joined the party than left under Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership, Labour’s National Executive Committee has confirmed.
There had been concerns that membership might drop off after Jeremy Corbyn was replaced at the helm, with numbers soaring during his tenure.
Some 564,000 people were understood to have signed up to the party by the end of 2017, although that dropped off to 475,000 before enjoying a brief resurgence ahead of the snap election in 2019.
Under Sir Keir the membership has stabilised at around 570,000, with resignations and membership lapses balanced out by new members joining.
The GS reported party membership around 570,000 & many more have joined the party than left. It is also clear that proportion of BAME membership is rising rather than falling but much more needs to be done to improve equalities monitoring allowing fuller & more accurate reports
— Gurinder Singh Josan CBE (@gsjosan) July 24, 2020
100 days
Earlier this month Sir Keir celebrated his first hundred days as leader of the Labour Party, which has been viewed as marking a “clean break” from the previous administration according to voters.
Sir Keir’s time at the helm has been dominated by COVID-19, but also by swift and decisive reforms to his party’s image – replacing the powerful general secretary with a more centrist figure, cracking down on antisemitism and firing his leadership rival Rebecca Long-Bailey from the shadow cabinet.
A third of the public rated him as similar to former Labour prime minister Tony Blair – compared with only 8 per cent finding him similar to his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn.
Meanwhile, 26 per cent regarded him as significantly different to Mr Blair, compared with a massive 61 per cent who regarded him as different to Mr Corbyn, who led Labour to its worst defeat in decades in December.
Next Prime Minister?
A separate poll found just shy of half (49 per cent) of UK adults say that their opinion of the Labour Party has become more positive since Keir Starmer became leader.
Meanwhile, 52 per cent can imagine Sir Keir as prime minister, including over a third (36 per cent) of 2019 Conservative voters.
Adam Drummond, head of political polling at Opinium, said the results show “how far Labour has come in Keir Starmer’s first 100 days but also how far they would still have to go to have a chance of winning power.
“The Labour leader is seen as a potential prime minister by 52 per cent of voters and 49 per cent say that he has made their perception of Labour more positive (vs. 29 per cent for Jeremy Corbyn at this point in his leadership).”
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