https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/reevess-corbyn-jibes-show-government-denial

AN EARLY exchange at the Edinburgh Fringe exposes this government’s inability to read the public mood — underlining how real a threat to it a new Jeremy Corbyn-led movement is.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves denied being complacent about the Your Party initiative launched by Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, but her bland dismissal of its prospects oozed complacency.

Oddly. Since Reeves had just stated that Labour’s main rival was not the Conservative Party — which she derided as “irrelevant” — but a new party of the right, Reform UK. And she was replying specifically to her host asking whether Your Party could become a “Reform of the left.”

Opinion polls suggest it could, though it is unlikely to bask in the approval of the billionaire press or receive the season tickets to BBC Question Time Nigel Farage’s projects enjoy. Movements intended to “take on the rich and powerful,” as Corbyn says a new left party would, face Establishment and state obstruction of a different order. However, that was not among Reeves’s reasons for belittling it.

No, the Chancellor disputes the idea that a project with 700,000 sign-ups is popular at all. She casts doubt on the figures, saying her sister received an email telling her she’d signed up when she hadn’t.

Such errors might occur. And enthusiasts for a new party can read too much into the stats: they are expressions of interest only, many will be in existing parties, and saying you want to be added to an email list does not imply the commitment of paid-up membership. But Reeves, in insinuating the mass appeal of Your Party is an illusion, doth protest too much.

…

Labour, still the largest party in Britain, is not finished; it is even, despite its leadership’s best efforts, still the party to which more socialists belong than any other.

But if anything is designed to entrench its dismal polling, encourage a member exodus to a new left party and unmoor it from what remains of its social base, it is the wilful blindness to the popular clamour for radical change exhibited by Reeves.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/reevess-corbyn-jibes-show-government-denial