The young prefer Corbyn to Starmer

Labour’s move to lower the voting age to 16 could spell trouble for Sir Keir Starmer, with Jeremy Corbyn proving significantly more popular than the Prime Minister with young people.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer served under Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour

Young voters are far more positive about Jeremy Corbyn than Sir Keir Starmer, underlining the risk to Labour as it gives the vote to 16-year-olds.

Corbyn, 76, is founding a left-wing party with another former Labour MP, Zarah Sultana, 31, whose potential to siphon off Labour support has alarmed No 10 despite confusion over the name of the movement.

Labour’s former leader remains deeply unpopular among voters as a whole, although Starmer’s approval has sunk to similar depths after a disappointing first year in power. The Prime Minister now has a net favourability rating of minus 40, almost identical to Corbyn’s minus-39 rating.

But while Starmer has uniformly poor ratings among voters of all ages, Corbyn is far more popular among the young. He has a positive approval rating of plus-18 among those aged 18 to 24, a YouGov poll for The Times found.

Earlier this month Labour announced that it would give 1.6 million 16 and 17-year-olds the vote at the next election, prompting right-wing accusations that it was attempting to rig the political system to shore-up support.

However, the latest polling will add to Labour concerns that the decision in fact risks energising populist challengers on the left who have been attracting younger supporters frustrated by Starmer’s stance on issues ranging from tax and migration to Gaza.

Corbyn’s embrace of pro-Palestine rallies and grassroots movements has him significantly more popular with young people than Starmer.

Pro-Gaza independent candidates did best last year in areas with high numbers of 16 and 17-year-olds, and there are signs that young women in particular are drifting leftwards.

Corbyn attracted an influx of young members while Labour leader and he claimed to have signed up 300,000 supporters within hours of the launch of yourparty.uk last week.

This was despite confusion over its name, with Sultana saying it would not be called “Your Party”, only for Corbyn to suggest the name could be adopted if it proved popular with supporters.

Corbyn described yourparty.uk as a “working title”, telling Novara Media “let’s see what happens” when asked if he wanted to be prime minister.

Corbyn described the party as “a community-based, grassroots-united organisation determined to challenge the establishment and bring about real political change”, criticising “austerity mark two under this government”.

With Nigel Farage leading the polls, Corbyn said that Reform UK “offer nothing to anybody other than blaming the nearest minority”.

Polls before the party was established suggested it could take about 10 per cent of the vote.

YouGov found that Green voters could be tempted by Corbyn, who has a plus-9 approval rating among those who backed the Greens at the last election. This is compared with a minus-5 rating among 2024 Labour voters, a group where Starmer has a plus-12 rating.

The question of an alliance between the Greens and Corbyn’s party is likely to be a central issue in its attempts to pose a challenge to Labour.

Zack Polanski, the “eco-populist” candidate for the Green leadership, has said he is open to a deal, while his rivals, Adrian Ramsay and Ellie Chowns, warn against becoming “a Jeremy Corbyn support act”.

THE TIMES