{"id":488556,"date":"2026-06-08T05:56:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T05:56:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/488556\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T05:56:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T05:56:18","slug":"jeremy-corbyn-the-disillusionment-with-labour-is-huge-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/488556\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeremy Corbyn: \u2018The disillusionment with Labour is huge\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Britain\u2019s Labour Party<\/a> is in \u201cdeep crisis\u201d as it has continued with Tory policies that have not delivered for the poorest communities, the party\u2019s former leader Jeremy Corbyn<\/a> has said. <\/p>\n

Speaking to The Irish Times, Corbyn said he saw no \u201chuge difference\u201d between the potential candidates for the party leadership following growing dissatisfaction with prime minister Keir Starmer<\/a>. <\/p>\n

If it is a three-way race between Starmer, Andy Burnham<\/a> and Wes Streeting<\/a>, Corbyn does not entirely discount the chances of Starmer surviving as his rivals may split the opposition vote.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Labour Party leadership is going to be an interesting one, but on current form there isn\u2019t really any huge difference between the candidates going forward,\u201d he said on the sidelines of the Robert Tressell Festival in Dublin on Saturday.<\/p>\n

He was not confident his former party can restore its electoral fortunes between now and the next general election, whoever the leader is.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would be very surprised if they can, because the disillusionment with Labour is huge. In the local elections, Labour seemed to me to have a problem of maintaining its activist base. And if the party loses its activist base, then it ceases to be that force in the community. I think they\u2019ve got real problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

Corbyn was Labour leader from 2015 to 2020. Under Keir Starmer he lost the party whip after a damning official report on anti-Semitism in the party while he was leader. He went on to become an independent MP.<\/p>\n

Today he believes Labour is in \u201cdeep crisis\u201d as a result of the government \u201cbasically carrying on with the Tory policies, and that is obviously not delivering for the poorest communities\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re faced with, as we all are, the growth of the far right on a very populist platform blaming refugees and migrants for the housing problems, the health problems and everything else.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Latest Mandelson files show what former ambassador really thought of Keir Starmer\u2019s governmentOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cLabour, unfortunately, instead of standing up against this, have played into it by now producing information about how many refugees they\u2019ve deported, how many boats they\u2019ve stopped, and so on. But where\u2019s our humanity?\u201d<\/p>\n

He said he understood the feeling of \u201cisolation and betrayal\u201d that Starmer may now be experiencing in facing a leadership contest. <\/p>\n

\u201cI had plenty of that done to me, but I don\u2019t indulge in personality attacks or personality politics,\u201d he said. \u201cAs far as I\u2019m concerned, the political policies and principles are more important.\u201d<\/p>\n

Starmer, he said, knows how these things work. <\/p>\n

\u201cWell, he should know what it\u2019s about, because he was a member of the team when the coup took place against me in 2016. The difference is that the coup against me was from within the parliamentary Labour Party and the shadow cabinet, but the support I had was from the party membership and the wider public.<\/p>\n

\u201cRemember, I was elected leader of the Labour Party in 2015 and the coup took place seven months into 2016, June-July time. I won that vote, and then less than a year later, we got the best result for Labour this century (in total votes received). That shows you can turn things around if you\u2019ve got the grassroots and the people with you. Starmer doesn\u2019t appear to have that at a personal level.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Ghost of Tony Blair continues to haunt LabourOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

One difficulty, he suggests, is that Starmer\u2019s election victory in 2024 was \u201ca loveless landslide\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe electoral system worked magnificently for Labour and gave them this huge majority on the lowest ever vote for a winning party in an election \u2013 and indeed the total vote for Labour in 2024 was less than I got in 2019 when I lost the election, and I do understand I lost.\u201d <\/p>\n

Asked if he expects to return to the party that expelled him at some point, he said: \u201cI don\u2019t think the Labour Party is keen on having me back, so no, I don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Ireland, Corbyn said his connections with the Republic remain strong and he usually visits several times a year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love being in Ireland. I love the Irish community in my area. I\u2019m here today to say thank you to Michael D<\/a> [Higgins] because I always thought it wonderful that Michael D, being a poet, was president of Ireland. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think it maybe should become a condition in the future: all poets must be presidents, or all presidents must be poets.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain\u2019s Labour Party is in \u201cdeep crisis\u201d as it has continued with Tory policies that have not delivered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":488557,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85530,61,1629,60,71223,1194,1193,977,43,1192,74244],"class_list":["post-488556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-andy-burnham","tag-ie","tag-immigration","tag-ireland","tag-jeremy-corbyn","tag-keir-starmer","tag-labour-party-uk","tag-michael-d-higgins","tag-news","tag-uk-politics","tag-wes-streeting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}