MP: Jeremy Corbyn will lose me my job

That is the stark warning from an ICM poll which reveals Labour would lose the Hove seat it won at last year’s election and 43 others across the country.

The news is being seen as a damning indictment of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership with Hove voters telling The Argus they would not vote for the party while he remained in charge.

Mr Kyle told this paper that he was not surprised by the latest negative polls for his party but said the numbers would dramatically improve if candidate Owen Smith wins September’s leadership election.

Rival parties are hoping to use Labour infighting and the dispute surrounding the local party to win a shock by-election victory in East Brighton next Thursday.

A Ukip leaflet for the city council by-election in the traditional Labour heartland makes specific reference to the local party’s recent “suspension” and annulment of its executive committee ballot.

The Hove MP said that the results from the pollsters ICM, which would represent Labour’s worst defeat since 1935, confirmed what he was hearing in the street, community events and in messages he received.

He said people wanted to see a Labour party that better understood the realities of everyday life.

He added: “Nothing in the poll surprises me at all but in terms of my job it doesn’t affect me one bit.

“I just want to make sure that if I do have just these five years, I will want to look back and say I tried to achieve everything I possibly could.

“There’s not a shadow of a doubt in my mind that Owen will take the party in the direction that the public want us to go in and need us to go in.”

Floating voters on the street of Hove yesterday told The Argus they would not vote for a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour.

Chris Kinsey, a 55-year-old NHS therapist, said: "I voted Labour last time but I wouldn't vote for them under the current circumstances.

“They don't have anything that makes me think that they could run the country at the moment.

“I think Peter Kyle is quite popular locally but when you're actually voting for a change of government it's about who is the leader and that has got to be sorted."

Roger Morris, a 65-year-old engineer, said: "I've voted Labour for most of my life but I can't even associate myself with them now.

“They're so out of touch with the world."

Roy Riggs, a 67-year-old consultant geo-biologist, said: "Labour are far too disorganised. Corbyn is far too erratic it's not stable enough for me to have any faith in them.

“I go for stability and experience and at the moment that's the Conservatives.”

Liam Evans, an 18-year-old student, said: "I am not sure I'd vote for Labour if Jeremy Corbyn were in power.

“I would usually vote Labour every time but it's hard to choose any of them at the moment."

VOTERS CONCENTRATE ON OUR ISSUES NOT NATION’S

WHEN we hit the streets of East Brighton yesterday, there was a sense of exasperation on the doorsteps of many over national politics.

Voters were keen to stress the importance of local issues – such as over-crowded parking, speed limits, crime and rubbish collection – over what they considered petty political in-fighting of the major parties.

Labour voters in East Brighton still have their hearts set on the new party candidate, Lloyd Russell-Moyle.

Yvonne Lane, a part-owner in a letting company, told us she was unsure who to vote for despite usually voting Conservative. She had not liked the Green party’s policies, such as cycle lanes and unenforced 20 mph speed limits.

Father Mark Chandler said that he wanted to look past the day-to-day political news, and focus exclusively on community issues and council accountability.

Ex-parachuter Alfredo Dessi and his wife Patricia, a personal care assistant, said they were very happy with Labour, especially with the schooling their three children, aged four, six and 15, were receiving at the local state schools.

Carlotta Soto, a 24-year old nurse from Spain, said she had no doubts about voting Labour, and that she enjoyed the largely left-leaning political atmosphere in Brighton.

Despite being disappointed by the national Labour fall-out, she said: “I am not worried about that; our council here is good”.

David Tyas, 67, said: “Labour are doing an OK job; they’re the best of the bunch, and they’re the most likely to get in.”

Mr Tyas told us that his Labour vote was predominantly an “anti-green vote” because he finds the party lack credibility, but that his most pressing issue was the lack of residents’ parking spaces.

His partner is a self-employed electrician, and the couple find it difficult to find space for the family car and van.

An election in East Brighton is usually a formality for Labour in one of their safest seats on the council.

The ward has been reliably returning three Labour councillors for decades and at the last city council elections the lowest-scoring Labour candidate, the now council leader Warren Morgan, gained almost twice the number of votes of his nearest Conservative challenger.

Even Labour candidate Lloyd-Russell Moyle believes it will be a “tight contest” with Conservative candidate David Plant hot on his heels.

The election is being held with a backdrop of turmoil within the Labour party both nationally and locally.

The Brighton, Hove and District Labour Party had its recent AGM election results annulled, some members claim because national bosses did not like the result, while nationally there is open warfare between Corbynistas and the Labour leader’s opponents.

Ukip members, possibly with mischief making in mind, have suggested there are two Labour parties campaigning in this election with both factions keeping a distance from the other while out canvassing.

A Ukip campaign leaflet makes explicit reference to the recent disciplinary action taken by Labour’s NEC against the local party.

Ian Buchanan, Ukip Brighton Kemptown chairman, said: “It would be nice to make a big dent in Labour’s numbers there. but after the referendum and with what’s going on within the Labour Party, who knows what might happen?”

Mr Russell-Moyle was the party’s parliamentary candidate for Lewes last year and prides himself on being the only party candidate to actually live in the East Brighton ward along with independent candidate Ramon David Sammut.

Any possible shift of traditional Labour voters to Ukip is given added spice by the presence of Ukip candidate Leigh Farrow, a former Labour councillor.

Mr Farrow was previously a councillor for Moulsecoomb and Bevendean until he was prevented from standing for re-election following a hotly-disputed disciplinary process in September 2014.

He then defected to Ukip three months later. despite previously criticising the party publicly as “racist” and “xenophobic”.

His campaign leaflets describe the £420 million redevelopment of the Royal Sussex as one of the ward’s biggest problems with residents facing disruptions from building work for the next ten years.

He blames Labour councillors for supporting the “disastrous development” from the beginning.

Mr Russell-Moyle, who lives close to the hospital, said the argument over the location of the new hospital development was 30 years too late and that Labour councillors were working hard to mitigate any disruption to residents’ lives.

Voters will go to the polls in a week after former Labour councillor Maggie Barradell was forced to stand down after the death of her father to care for her mother in Suffolk.

The city council’s ruling Labour minority administration is trying to retain their slender three councillor advantage over the Conservatives.

Also on the ballot paper will be former Roedean teacher and Sussex Women’s Cricket Association organiser Andrew England standing for the Liberal Democrats and community campaigner Mitch Alexander for the Green Party.

Mrs Alexander said: “I think people are looking for an alternative view. Some of the Labour members on the council are not particularly left leaning in my opinion.”“Ukip has only got one string to their bow but the Green Party has many more.

“I’m making it my top priority in East Brighton to make sure that everybody is listened to and everyone has a voice.”

PARTY STRUGGLES WITH DIVISIONS

CRITICS of Jeremy Corbyn have used the results of the online ICM poll, which targeted a selection of 200,000 eligible voters and was carried out between July 22 and 24, to again call for him to stand aside as leader.

But the Islington MP remains popular among constituency Labour parties (CLPs) who are backing him over leadership challenger Owen Smith.

Hastings and Rye CLP is among the most recent to vote overwhelmingly in favour of the current leader with 88.4 per cent backing Mr Corbyn and just 7 per cent backing Owen Smith.

Mr Smith was forced to respond to criticism yesterday of his comments that the party should take on Theresa May and “smash her back on her heels”.

Mr Corbyn’s re-election campaign has received the backing of trade unions in recent days with train drivers’ union Aslef following in the footsteps of building workers’ union Ucatt. The poll shows Labour would lose Hove and 43 other seats around the country in a snap election.

It has given Theresa May’s Conservatives a 16 point lead over Labour with 43 per cent of voters declaring they would vote Tory at an election held now.

The poll results would see Labour reduced to 188 MPs, their lowest figure since the early days of Clement Atlee’s leadership of the party in 1935.