Corbyn’s victory was extraordinary
Gloucester Citizen and Gloucestershire Echo, 18 July 2024, p. 23
The highly improbable victory of Jeremy Corbyn in Islington North in the recent General Election was an extraordinary achievement, almost unprecedented in British electoral history.
It has been predictably sidelined or ignored by the Corbyn-hating mainstream media, including the BBC, because it flagrantly contradicts their chosen narrative.
It is instructive to compare the respective results of Corbyn and our new Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, whose constituency, Holborn and St Pancras, is next door to Corbyn’s.
In the 2019 General Election, Corbyn won 34,603 votes, or 64.35% of the popular vote, while Starmer won 36,641 votes, or 64.5% of the vote. The comparable figures for July 2024 are Corbyn 24,120 votes (or 49.2%) and Starmer 18,884 votes (or 48.9% – vote share down by 17.4%).
The number of votes Corbyn received in 2024 was 30.3% lower in 2024 compared with 2019 (without the help of the Labour Party machine), while Starmer’s was a whopping 48.5% lower (with the help of the Labour Party machine behind him).
From these tell-tale figures it will be plain as any pikestaff which of these political leaders is the more popular amongst the electorate that really knows them – their local constituents.
Anyone familiar with our electoral system will know that Independent candidates with no party machine bankrolling them, and who possess none of the historical canvassing records held by the main political parties, have virtually no chance of winning against the power of the party-political machine.
Yet starting from scratch with only volunteers to help him, Corbyn won a famous victory that has virtually no parallel in British electoral history.
I had the pleasure and good fortune to spend seven full days campaigning for Corbyn. It was one of the most uplifting and moving experiences of my 70 years in this lifetime.
Dr Richard House
Stroud, Gloucestershire
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- Corbyn’s victory was extraordinary
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