This week saw some in-depth polling of Labour members released, which you can see here and here. The number that made headlines was 62%; the proportion of Labour members who said that they would re-elect Jeremy Corbyn as leader if they had to vote again today.

I oppose Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party; I’ve written about it before, and I’m not doing so again. As someone who feels this way, that 62% can feel pretty depressing. And on top of this, there are a lot of things that concern me, and many other members too.

The divisiveness and entryism led by Momentum is deeply worrying. A nastiness has become prevalent in Labour circles. The attitude of some Corbyn supporters, telling anyone who expresses an opinion contrary to the leadership to join the Tories, or claiming Neil Kinnock didn’t represent “Real Labour” values, or referring to New Labour as “Nazitory”, or decrying all polling companies as biased… Michael Deacon states these people make Labour look like a cult for cranks, and he’s not wrong. Dissent will not be brooked. Jeremy cannot be questioned.

But here’s my contention. Corbyn supporters are not a homogeneous bloc, and in fact these people, the “Corbynites”, are a minority. A noisy, abusive minority, but a minority nonetheless. And that is important.

Since the election, membership has grown by nearly 200,000. Are most of these 200,000 new members hard leftists? I doubt it. Momentum is aiming to have a paying membership of one-tenth of that by the end of the year. Only 50,000 people voted for socialist parties in the 2015 general election, and Kate Godfrey estimates there are 4–5,000 people in the British far-left movement.

So, while the problems posed by Momentum, entryism, and some of Jeremy Corbyn’s more strident supporters are real and must be opposed, we run the risk of ignoring a far bigger demographic altogether; one that is being lost in the Labour civil war.

A couple of weeks ago, after I posted my Neil Kinnock piece, I got talking to a Corbyn supporter online. I’m going to call him Chris, because that’s his name. Chris was evidently a decent sort and not one of the aforementioned Corbynites, so I started asking some questions. I’m going to try and summarise his views here; I hope I can do him justice.

Corbyn wins Chris’s backing for his unambiguously anti-austerity platform and his ideals for a more radical Labour Party. Chris felt that under Tony Blair, Labour had become too cosy with big business and the City, although he happily acknowledged that New Labour achieved a lot of good things as well.

He didn’t find any of the other leadership candidates particularly compelling; Burnham swayed with public opinion to try and win votes, which showed a lack of leadership; despite her great work with refugees, and her refusal to follow the Tory economic narrative, Yvette Cooper ran a weak campaign; Liz Kendall was great personally but was too close to the Conservatives in her economic approach.

In terms of Jeremy Corbyn’s links with people such as the IRA, Chris was wary but believed in conducting dialogue to obtain a positive outcome in difficult situations, and he accepted John McDonnell’s apology on Question Time. He thinks that opposition from the PLP is ok but has been far too public, which is damaging to the party’s electoral chances.