Corbyn ‘ heading for 1983-style disaster’

JEREMY Corbyn could be heading for a landslide election defeat similar to Michael Foot’s crushing loss to Margaret Thatcher in 1983, a leading pollster said yesterday.

Peter Kellner, former president of the YouGov polling firm, said the election is ‘for the Conservatives to lose’.

Some of Mr Corbyn’s ‘controversial policies’, such as the free broadband plan, were hits – but voters think he is ‘too incompetent’ to trust with the UK’s finances, he said.

Asked to compare the Corbyn versus Boris Johnson contest with other elections in recent history, Kellner, 73, said it was ‘a bit like 1983’. He added: ‘We are now moving into quite clear Conservative government majority territory.’ The 1983 election saw Labour’s Michael Foot lose by a landslide to Margaret Thatcher.

In its worst effort since 1918, Labour won 209 Commons seats, barely half the Tories’ 397. The anti-nuclear and pro-nationalisation manifesto of Foot, 72, was derided as ‘the longest suicide note in history’ by 1980s Labour grandee Gerald Kaufman. Mr Kellner said that while some of Mr Corbyn’s ‘controversial policies’ were popular with some voters, they didn’t trust him to implement them. The ‘competence drag of Labour’ mattered more than the appeal of policies such as renationalising the railways or free broadband, said Mr Kellner.

He explained: ‘When people are asked, “Will there be a recession under Labour?” people say yes; [when you ask] are Corbyn and John McDonnell competent? [people say] “No they are not”.’

Labour could gain support if people thought such plans would be properly run, provide ‘good value for public money and catapult Britain into a high-tech future’. But that was not certain, explained Mr Kellner. ‘If people say, “We know what Labour do, they renationalise things, they run them incompetently, there are big cost overruns”, it could damage Labour.

One factor in Mr Corbyn’s favour was that Mr Johnson did not have the ‘weight or popularity’ of Mrs Thatcher, who also reaped the reward of having won the Falklands war in 1982. But there was no doubt that Mr Johnson currently held the upper hand over Mr Corbyn, said Mr Kellner.