Somebody Else's Problem wrote:The thing is, I'm quite hard left myself, so I'm inclined to lean towards Corbyn. I even joined the Labour party to support him. I strongly disagree with the blairites who want the Labour party to simply be a slightly less shitty version of the Tories, and who led us to an illegal war which affected me personally in ways I may never fully get over. If it wasn't for my, shall we say, past skeletons in my closet, I'd consider running for the local Labour council seat, much like a good friend of mine is doing in her constituency.
Corbyn definitely has the support of a lot of people, hence he's won two leadership contests and Labour have taken numerous by-elections since his first appointment as Labour leader. Huge numbers of people joined Labour in order to support his re-election, so he's reaching people. But the Murdoch-led media seem to be the ones writing the stories, so you get things like Brexit and false representation of Labour support.
Labour haven't taken any Westminster by-elections since his appointment (they've held seats, which isn't the same thing) and have in fact lost a seat they've held since 1935 to the Tories, after they decided to chase a hard Brexit and transparently strawberry floated up the country. In council by-elections, they've lost 22 (source:
click here for seats and parties) and gained just 10 for a net loss of 12. Gains:
click here for details. There is the city of London, but given how outrageous Goldsmith's campaign was (which in turn contributed to him losing his own Westminster seat) and how independently Sadiq ran of the Corbyn label I'm not sure that's overly related to Jezza.
Interested to know how this overall picture matches your claims that they're taking by elections and that Corbyn is reaching people, because literally all the evidence suggests that he's turning people away from Labour.