Among Labour's top donors, John Mills, chairman of the consumer products giant JML, gave a donation of US$1.95 million when the party was led by Ed Miliband's leadership, but has not given the main party any extra funding since.
Hedge fund manager Martin Taylor donated nearly US$732,000 to Labour over a period of years, but has reduced his contribution now to just US$195,000 under Corbyn.
A brief video overview of Jeremy #Corbyn's policy positions.
— Momentum Oxford (@MomentumOx) 5 March 2017
Ealing Labour for Corbyn #EL4C @UKLabourhttps://t.co/OtFX6X6d82 pic.twitter.com/QWyE2wxlSy
Labour's top individual donors gave a total of US$8.5 million between 2010 and 2015, when Miliband failed to win the election, paving the way for a leadership race, which was won — to the surprise of many — by Corbyn. However, since he took over, those donations have dwindled to just US$366,000.
Membership Diving
It emerged on March 3, that Labour has lost nearly 26,000 members since last summer. The number of resignations in 2016 was more than the total of the previous six years combined. Labour's membership has dropped from 554,000 in July 2016 to 528,180 in February 2017.
The latest @YouGov polling of #Labour members shows a party divided under #Corbyn | By @JamesPlaskitt10 https://t.co/gzmKvBZewb
— Cicero Elections (@CiceroElections) 7 March 2017
In February, Labour lost the parliamentary seat of Copeland, in north west England, which it had held since 1935, marking a new low for the party. For the Conservatives to have won Copeland after having been in Labour hands for 80 years is a clear sign of the disarray within the Labour Party — its grassroots membership, its disparate splinter groups and the parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) under Corbyn.
The latest ComRes poll shows that just a third (32 percent of Labour voters think Corbyn is the right person to lead the party into the 2020 general election. However, the story is worse when the voting intentions of non-Labour voters — those the party needs to win over — are taken into account.
Seventy-seven percent believe the party doesn't have the right leader, 73 percent think it doesn't have the right policies and 71 percent think it has lost touch with the working classes.
