Could Labour end up in third place in the polls due to the new Corbyn / Sultana party?

In 2007, Archie Stirling (the husband and father of the actresses Diana Rigg and Rachael Stirling respectively) set up a fringe party called Scottish Voice for that year's Holyrood election, and used his wealth to commission a YouGov opinion poll which purported to show that around 20% of the Scottish population would consider voting for the party.  That was around a hundred times higher than the 0.2% of the public that actually voted for Scottish Voice at the election itself.  The point being, of course, that it's very easy for people to try to look reasonable by saying they'll "consider" doing something, but actually doing it is another matter.

Ever since then, I've used the term "Archie Stirling poll question" when someone about to set up a political party cynically uses that type of question to give the false impression that the party will be wildly popular.  The classic example, of course, was the controversial and increasingly far-right Somerset blogger "Stew", who asked an almost identical question to Stirling's (and got similar results) when he was toying with the idea of setting up a Wings Party.  And he knew exactly what he was doing, because several people had warned him in advance that he needed to ask a more credible question, and explained why that was so important.

YouGov may have found an elegant way of squaring the circle with the prospective new Jeremy Corbyn / Zarah Sultana left-wing party, though.  They've asked respondents whether they would consider voting for the party, but they've also asked the same question about all the other established GB-wide parties, thus allowing what might be a more meaningful comparison to be made.

Percentage who will consider voting for each party (YouGov, 6th-7th July 2025):

Labour 30%

Liberal Democrats 28%

Greens 28%

Reform UK 28%

Conservatives 24%

Corbyn 18%

If you apply that sort of differential to the current polls, it's at least imaginable that a Corbyn party could start off with 8-10% of the vote.

Assuming people answered the question honestly, Labour's absolute maximum vote at the moment is 30%, which I've tended to assume would not be enough to win an election for them, because the right-wing vote will consolidate behind Reform or the Tories.  But as you can see, the supposed maximum vote for either Reform or the Tories is actually slightly below 30%, implying there are a lot of Reform voters who hate the Tories and vice versa.

However, even if the right-wing vote does give an assist to Starmer by remaining helpfully split, Labour still stand to suffer far more from a Corbyn party than their main opponents.  As many as 31% of Labour voters from last year's general election say they will consider voting for Corbyn's outfit, compared with only 2% of Tory voters.  If Labour do slip any further in the polls, they could end up in third or fourth place with less than 20% of the vote.

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