8.5%
Support for Labour Party collapses to dramatic low
JUST 8.5 per cent of British Jews would vote Labour if there was a general election tomorrow, a JC poll has revealed.
And 38.5 per cent of Jews give Labour the worst possible mark — 5 out of 5 — for antisemitism among party members and elected representatives.
The poll results come as Jeremy Corbyn’s party is engulfed by an antisemitism crisis now entering its fourth month.
The 8.5 per cent figure for Labour shows how far Jewish support for the party has plummeted since last year’s election, when 18 per cent say they voted for Labour under Ed Miliband’s leadership.
Two-thirds of the Jewish community believe Mr Corbyn is doing a bad job of addressing antisemitism in his party. Asked about the independent inquiry he launched last Friday, 66.4 per cent of Jews think he has not done enough.
Just one in five — 20.5 per cent — describe Mr Corbyn’s efforts to tackle the problem as “good”.
Polling carried out by Survation on Tuesday and Wednesday for the JC reveals that communal support for Labour has collapsed.
Of those who did not vote for Labour last year, but had considered doing so in the past decade, 84 per cent say they consider Mr Corbyn’s position as leader an “important” factor when deciding whether to support the party. Fourteen per cent say Mr Corbyn is “not important” to their voting intentions.
Respondents were asked for their
perceptions of antisemitism in the leading political parties. Just over 70 per cent ranked the level of Jew-hate among the Conservatives as being in the two lowest bands out of five.
Only one per cent of Jewish voters believe the Tories have “high” levels of antisemitism.
For Labour, the same question revealed that 38.5 per cent of British Jews think the party has the highest level of Jew-hate, ranking it 5 out of 5.
In total, almost 87 per cent feel there is antisemitism among Labour’s members and elected representatives.
Respondents were also asked whether they had considered voting for Labour since 2005. More than twothirds had not; just 32 per cent had thought of backing Labour in the past 10 years.
Support for the current Labour party is highest among those aged 18-34, at 11 per cent, but among the over-55s it drops to only five per cent.
The poll also reveals that more than four out of five Jews feel “safe or quite safe” in this country. Just 2 per cent say they feel “very unsafe”. Another 15 per cent say they feel “quite unsafe”.
This week’s poll puts the Tories on 81.9 per cent with Jewish voters. The Liberal Democrats are on 4.6 per cent and Ukip on 2.3 per cent. In last year’s general election, 64 per cent of the community voted for the Conservatives.
Survation polled a representative sample of more than 1,000 British Jews.
In August last year, a JC poll showed 67 per cent of British Jews were concerned about Mr Corbyn becoming leader.
Eighty-three per cent had said they were concerned by comments in which Mr Corbyn referred to terrorist groups Hamas and Hizbollah as “our friends”.