The gap between Starmer's polling and Labour's isn't that hard to understand. The con-lib mainstream in politics and media trashed both the party and its leader between 2015 and 2019. The leader has changed and voters like the depiction of him they encounter in the media.
But many of those who were persuaded that the Party itself was a nest of racists and communists will take longer to come down from the paranoid fantasies about Labour they were fed with their cornflakes for four years.
Those who now control the Party won't challenge those fantasies. Instead they will be relentless in finding ways to "show Labour has changed". We can expect one Clause 4 moment after another from now until the next election, on tax, public services, nationalisation, the lot.
The members can stop this drift to the right, through organising in the CLPs. But many of them voted for Starmer, thinking that he would preserve the content of Corbynism while professionalising the form, so I am not sure that they understand what's going on, or their power.
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