Revealed: how Jeremy Corbyn has reshaped the Labour party [View all]

[Denzil_DC]

Jeremy Corbyn’s hopes of remoulding Labour have been boosted by a detailed Guardian survey into the party at grassroots level that shows overwhelming support for him, a decisive shift to the left and unhappiness with squabbling among MPs.

The Guardian has interviewed Labour secretaries, chairs, other office holders and members from more than 100 of the 632 constituencies in England, Scotland and Wales. Almost every constituency party across the country we contacted reported doubling, trebling, quadrupling or even quintupling membership, and a revival of branches that had been moribund for years and close to folding.

Party membership figures are a controversial issue, with the former cabinet minister Peter Mandelson, who is opposed to Corbyn, telling a Labour meeting in the Lords last month that “30,000 long-term members have left the party, real members, tens of thousands”.

But the newly released figures undermine his claim, showing a total of 13,860 have left since the general election, some of them having resigned while others have gone as part of natural churn. The increase in membership is continuing, with just under 1,000 having joined since Christmas Eve.

The survey found:

* The rise in membership has been uneven across the country. In contrast with steep rises in London and elsewhere in England and Wales, the rises in Scotland have been relatively modest, ominous for the party’s hopes in May’s Scottish parliamentary election.
* Members, in spite of unhappiness with public splits within the PLP, say there is no appetite for deselection of MPs. But some acknowledge that proposed boundary changes in 2018 could result in de-facto deselection.
* Returning members, who had left Labour mainly in protest over the 2003 Iraq invasion, are making an immediate impact, partly because they are familiar with the rules.
* Both returning members and new ones tend to be mainly leftwing. There are few reports of attempted infiltration from hard-left groups.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jan/13/revealed-how-jeremy-corbyn-has-reshaped-the-labour-party?CMP=share_btn_tw

I don't have a direct axe to grind here. I'm in Scotland, and the survey's findings about "modest" membership rises there chime with my views - Labour, at least with its current useless leadership personnel in Scotland, is a spent force up here.

The challenge will be to convert a re-energized membership into activism and meaningful electoral votes. I'd be interested to hear how well any of the rest of this survey and its observations fit with your local experiences. My gut feel tells me that the continual ant-Corbynite backbiting and mixed messaging are likely to be much more of a turnoff than any policies proposed or perceived gaffes.