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Labour approval rating hits record low… for some odd reason

Shocking maybe no one, Keir Starmer’s Labour government has sunk to its lowest approval rating yet.

This isn’t as bad as some Conservative governments’ lowest moments, but Starmer won’t be happy to discover what happened to the prime ministers who experienced the below peaks:

Graph showing government approval over time since 2011
Courtesy of YouGov

How did we get here with Labour’s approval rating?

Those who follow the brilliant Stats for Lefties will know Starmer has been smashing approval records for some time:

Featured image via Number 10 – Flickr / Stats for Lefties

So what’s gone wrong for the Starmer government?

Quite a lot, to be honest, but the biggest bodges have been:

It obviously hasn’t helped that Starmer has all the charisma of a vending machine Scotch egg, but even ’97 Tony Blair would struggle to make hay with these policies.

If anything, the problems seem to be accelerating too; in the past three weeks alone, Starmer’s government has:


Now let’s look at the other times when government unpopularity peaked.

Spiked

5 June 2016, approval hits -43 (18 points better than today). One month later on 13 July, prime minister David Cameron ended his time as prime minister:

Graph showing approval is at 18% and disapproval is at 61%
Courtesy of YouGov

13 May 2019, approval hits -63 (2 points worse than today). Two months later on 24 July, Theresa May ended her time as prime minister:

Graph showing approval at 9% and disapproval at 72%
Courtesy of YouGov

17 October 2022, approval hits -69 (8 points worse than today). You’re expecting us to say Boris Johnson ended his time as prime minister sometime after this, but actually he was done a month earlier on 6 September when approval was at -47 (14 points better than today). It was Liz Truss who left on 25 October, a week later, in what we should probably refer to as the ‘autumn of discontent’.

Graph showing approval at 8% and disapproval at 77%
Courtesy of YouGov

Finally, we get to 1 July 2024, when approval hit -61 (equal to today). Rishi Sunak exited Downing Street four days later on 5 July.

Graph showing disapproval at 73% and approval at 12%
Courtesy of YouGov

To recap, the Starmer government’s approval is:

  • Better than the crisis points before Theresa May and Liz Truss resigned.
  • Equal to Rishi Sunak’s at the point when he lost the general election.
  • Significantly worse than the lowest moments for David Cameron and Boris Johnson.

Point-less

Remember when Tony Blair said this under Corbyn?

Now, Labour’s approval rating is struggling to hit 20 points, never mind being 20 points ahead:

We’re tempted to say this dire polling spells the end for Starmer, but let’s not count the man out.

If he really tries his hardest – if he really knuckles down – there’s every chance he can break the record set by Liz Truss and hit a -100 approval rate.

Featured image via Downing Street 

By Willem Moore

This post was originally published on Canary.