‘More people have joined Labour than left’ under Keir Starmer, NEC says

Despite claims from the Labour left that the new leader is attempting to purge them from the party, the number of members has increased compared to a year before.

Jeremy Corbyn has been credited with growing the membership numbers, with the previous high reported at 564,000 in December 2017.

But Corbyn’s failure to tackle anti-Semitism and bitter Brexit divisions were blamed for a drop in numbers to under 480,000 shortly after the European elections.

Now membership has risen to 570,000, with membership numbers in 2020 some of the highest seen since individual national membership was recorded in the 1980s.

The GS reported party membership around 570,000 & many more have joined the party than left. It is also clear that proportion of BAME membership is rising rather than falling but much more needs to be done to improve equalities monitoring allowing fuller & more accurate reports
— Gurinder Singh Josan CBE (@gsjosan) July 24, 2020
 

Gurinder Singh Josan tweeted that general secretary David Evans had said that ‘many more have joined the party than left’.

He also confirmed that the proportion of Black Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) membership is also ‘rising rather than falling’ after Starmer’s pledge to tackle anti-Semitism in the party.

‘Twitter will make you believe that we’re leaving in droves lol,’ noted one member in the comments.

Luke John Davies tweeted: ‘This is particularly welcome news. Glad to see scare stories from the hard left that BAME members are leaving are unfounded and that in fact our BAME membership is rising.’

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