Corbyn: Labour’s poll rating has suffered from summer leadership contest

Jeremy Corbyn has blamed Labour’s poor opinion poll ratings on the party’s summer leadership contest and vowed to turn them around as he rolls out his anti-austerity agenda.

Corbyn faced criticism after the party slumped to fourth place in the Sleaford and North Hykeham by-election but has shrugged off complaints over his direction as urged activists and MPs to be “optimistic” and offer “hope, not blame”.

The Labour leader shrugged off criticism over polling – an ICM/Guardian survey this week put the Opposition on 27 per cent compared to the Tories on 41 per cent – and suggested the party had wasted time with a leadership vote in which he ultimately saw off Owen Smith with ease.

“We were distracted by the leadership contest when we could have been attacking the Tories,” Corbyn told the New Statesman.

“We’ll see how they [the polls] develop as we develop our economic programme. We have got to be optimistic. We have got to offer hope,
not blame.”

Corbyn has made a series of frontbench appointments in the aftermath of the leadership election, and brought back several big names to his shadow cabinet, such as shadow Brexit Secretary, but he accepted that some of his parliamentary critics would never be satisfied with his leadership.

When asked why some Labour MPs are unhappy he said: “Some people are just never satisfied. Look, I hope they all have a wonderful Christmas, and I hope that we can do what we did [sic] on the schools, on the health service, on the economy, and win the election campaigns to come. We are on the way. We are hopeful. We are confident. And we are committed.”

Labour came fourth in Sleaford as the Tories comfortably retained the seat following the resignation of their own MP over “irreconcilable policy differences” with Theresa May after the Brexit vote.

In the Richmond Park by-election, a week earlier, Christian Wolmar, the rail expert, came third and lost his deposit.

Both Wolmar and Jim Clarke, the candidate in Lincolnshire, fought strong local campaigns.