Jeremy Corbyn tops poll for best prime minister Britain never had
12,300 votes cast in World Cup of Best PMs We Never Had, with the MP who led his party into the abyss of antisemitism and its worst election defeat for 85 years coming out on top.
He’s the leader under whose watch anti-Jewish racism consumed the Labour Party before it fell to its worst general election defeat since 1935, yet Jeremy Corbyn has now been voted the best prime minister Britain never had.
A Twitter poll by Times Radio saw the MP for Islington North defeat former Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy in the final round, with 57.7% of the vote.
Some 12,300 votes were cast in presenter Matt Chorley’s “World Cup of Best PMs We Never Had”.
Enough is Enough demonstrators hold up signs against Labour antisemitism in March 2018.
Corbyn beat his predecessors Ed Miliband and John Smith, as well as ex-Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown, and Conservative former chancellor Ken Clarke in the online poll.
Writing in The Times Red Box email briefing before the final on Monday, Chorley said: “It is a title few really want. Actually being the prime minister, even a bad one, is surely better than never quite making it.
“But plenty of people have been dubbed the ‘best PM we never had’ over the years. So as it is a bank holiday weekend, I decided to put the idea to the test to see if we could agree on a single name. As if.”
Corbyn became Labour leader in 2015, a result which marked a fundamental change of direction for the party.
He was leader through two general election defeats, the last of which saw seats which had been Labour for generations turned blue as the party’s hitherto impregnable “red wall” crumbled in the face of the Tory advance.
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