Could Jeremy Corbyn win back Ukip voters?

Jeremy Corbyn—likely to be Labour's next leader come Saturday—has always dismissed claims that he is “unelectable.” It's misguided, his supporters say, to argue that he might not win back many Tory voters and therefore can't win in 2020. What about people who didn't vote last time? Or SNP voters? Or young people? Or Ukippers?

Today, we have some new evidence about that last group. Lord Ashcroft, the pollster, has released some research looking at why people stopped voting for Labour under Ed Miliband. Ashcroft compared “loyalists,” who voted for the party in 2010 and 2015, with “defectors,” who had voted for the party, but not in 2015. Within the last group, he looked specifically at those who left the party for Ukip.

For Corbynistas, his findings are a mixed bag. The Jez we can brigade might take heart at some of the sentiments expressed by those who left Ed for Nigel. A majority of Ukip defectors said the reason they switched was that “Labour no longer seem to stand for the things they used to,” and they were much more likely than Tory defectors to say “Labour no longer seemed to stand up for people like me.” At the same time, they were less likely to care about Miliband's perceived lack of competence. “I think Labour used to be for the working man but they’ve stepped up a bit,” said one Ukip switcher in Ashcroft's focus groups. Corbyn supporters might argue that a principled man seen to stand for old fashioned Labour values, with a policy programme focused on some of society's least fortunate could capture such voters. Ukip say they aren't worried, though: “Corbyn's values are those of a radical 70's lecturer, not of a Northen estate dwelling worker,” a party spinner says.

Corbyn's most important obstacle, though, is immigration. While the left-winger has been fairly vague about his immigration policy thus far in the race, it's likely to be very liberal, and therefore out of line with the views of Ukippers. In Ashcroft's focus groups, Ukip switchers “nearly always” mentioned immigration as a reason for their decision to leave Labour. Notably, many were public sector workers—potentially a natural Corbyn constituency—who were worried about the impact of mass immigration on the services they ran. “Close the floodgates, the health system is at breaking point,” said one. “I want my country back. When you go for a walk in Grays, no-one talks English,” said another. Ukip are likely to use this as their prime line of attack on a Corbyn-led Labour party. One staffer I spoke to recently said it would be “party time” if the Islington MP won. “We'll just go all out on immigration.”

Many of Ukip's voters are highly disengaged from mainstream politics, making their behaviour hard to predict. But 51 per cent of Ukip switchers told Ashcroft they found the decision to leave Labour “easy.” It's not impossible to bring them into the fold, but after years of perceived neglect by Tony Blair and his successors, they won't come running back to the reds the instant Corbyn shows up.