In all this talk of early elections, of dates and delays, there is one common if, for some, uncomfortable premise. It is the constant factor in the calculus run by all the political parties and by the warring factions within them. Put simply, it is the fact that vast swathes of the electorate are unprecedentedly hostile to the idea of making Jeremy Corbyn their prime minister.
The Labour leader has the lowest poll numbers of any leader of the opposition since records began. His net satisfaction rating is minus 60, outstripping the previous negative record held since 1982 by Michael Foot. He is less popular than Boris Johnson among both men and women, in every socioeconomic category, whether richer or poorer, in London and Scotland as well as the Midlands and Wales and, remarkably, in every age group. Perhaps it’s no surprise that the over-65s prefer Johnson to Corbyn by 62% to 8%, but it’s arresting that even among the youngest voters, aged 18 to 24, those once seen as the Labour leader’s base, Corbyn is less popular than the prime minister, albeit by three points.
Point this out, and the Labour leader’s most unbending followers will insist that you can’t believe opinion polls. Swiftly, they will remind you that Corbyn’s poll numbers were dire back in the spring of 2017 too, only for Labour to surge by election day – though, of course, Labour still lost that contest. They believe that the lightning of 2017 will strike twice, that once “Jeremy” has equal time on TV and is back on the campaign trail, the magic will happen all over again.
Never mind that Theresa May was a truly awful candidate tied to a voter-repellent manifesto, and that Johnson will be a much wilier opponent. Or that whatever novelty and freshness Corbyn represented in 2017 will have faded this time round. Or that Corbyn is far more unpopular now than he was back then, when even at his lowest ebb his net satisfaction rating was a mere minus 41. Or that Labour benefited in 2017 from remainers lending their votes to the party to stop Brexit, a move not all of them will be willing to repeat. Never mind all that, the faith of the true believers is intact.
And given how recent contests have turned out, both here and abroad, as well as the new multiparty landscape of British politics, only a fool would bet the farm on any outcome.
Still, outside the circle of the devout, Labour’s low ratings are currently accepted as a political fact on the basis of which important decisions are made. Take five paces back and that explains the current standoff over an election date. The Tories want an election because they believe that, as things stand, they have a good chance of winning it. Labour backbenchers are reluctant to have an election for the same reason: they think the Tories will win. One shadow cabinet member reckons that even if Labour were to whip its MPs to accede to Johnson’s request for a mistletoe and holly election on 12 December, Labour MPs would vote against it. Why? “Because turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.”
Those whose driving cause is stopping Brexit proceed on the same assumption as everyone else. Right now, the stalemate parliament – where Johnson can be thwarted on a timetable one day, forced into an extension the next – allows them to keep the dream alive. So long as the UK hasn’t actually left the European Union, the remain cause lives to fight another day. But if Johnson forces an election and, as the polls suggest, wins it, then he’ll be able to pass his Brexit deal comfortably. It will all be over.
Some remainer MPs also make a good principled case for wanting to delay an election until after Brexit has been resolved by this current parliament. The problem with a general election, they say, is contained in the name: it’s a general vote, about a range of issues, which means it can never provide definitive clarity on Brexit. Only a referendum on Johnson’s deal v remain could do that.
That logic is sound, but you’d be naive to think its advocates would be pushing it if Johnson were trailing, rather than leading, in the polls by double digits. It’s worth stressing, remainers’ nervousness about an early election is not because they fear they are on the losing side of the Brexit argument itself. On the contrary, remain has enjoyed an unbroken lead over leave in the polls since March 2018: the current average shows remain leading by – wouldn’t you know it – 52% to 48%. The problem lies in how the forces of leave and the forces of remain will square up against each other in the next parliamentary election.
Through his die-in-a-ditch antics, and his leadership of the 2016 Vote Leave campaign, Johnson may well unite most of the leave tribe behind him: Brexiters believe he’s one of their own. But the anti-Brexit vote is divided, as many remainers reflect on the past three years of Labour triangulation on the issue, and Corbyn’s own anti-EU history, and turn to the Lib Dems instead.
Under Theresa May, the Tories faced a similar problem, haemorrhaging votes to Nigel Farage among Brexiters who considered May a closet remainer. They replaced May with Johnson and watched the Brexit party’s numbers slide. Ask yourself, would the Lib Dems be enjoying their current poll revival if Labour were led by someone instantly and intuitively identifiable as a conviction remainer? Or would remain voters feel no need to decamp to Jo Swinson in that scenario, happily rallying behind Labour instead? To be concise, Johnson yearns for an election because the remain vote is divided – and that is because millions of remainers have looked at Corbyn’s Labour and decided they need to look elsewhere.
Yet the curious thing about British politics just now is that, among Labour supporters, this is barely mentioned in public. To raise it is to bring social media ordure down upon on your head, as if it were improper or even sacrilegious to speak of such things – even though it is truly extraordinary that the party of opposition is not 20 points ahead of a government in office for nine years, so bitterly divided it has expelled 21 of its own MPs, including two former chancellors, and which has failed to deliver on its central promise. Such a government should be bracing itself for a wipeout. Instead, blessed by a record-breakingly weak opposition, it is preparing to win another term.
The diehards will say that to criticise Corbyn in this way is to side with the Tories against the poor and vulnerable. But the opposite is true. To stick with a path that makes five more years of Boris Johnson, and a hard Brexit, more likely is not to side with the poor and the vulnerable – it is to betray them.
• Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
