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Record breaker Starmer is the ‘most unpopular PM since polling began’

According to the latest polling from Ipsos, Keir Starmer is the least popular PM on record.


It follows several recent scandals which have driven speculation that a leadership challenge is incoming.

Fading fortunes for Starmer in polling

This historic moment follows a string of devastating polling results for Starmer and Labour:


It wouldn’t be impossible for a politician to turn this around, but few see Starmer as the sort of operator who could engineer such a revival. As a result of his many u-turns and betrayals, the public increasingly view him as a dishonest politician who will say anything in the moment – a man who cannot be trusted. It’s not just the public who see him this way, either, with members of his own party voicing their own unhappiness on his poor judgement.

While Boris Johnson and Donald Trump had a similar reputation around the truth, those men were able to push it through sheer force of personality. Starmer doesn’t seem to have any personality whatsoever, let alone one which he could use to force through his increasingly unpopular policy platform.

At this moment in time, Andy Burnham is seen as the man most likely to challenge Starmer for the leadership. As recent Ipsos polling suggests, he is one of five Labour politicians whose overall approval is greater than Starmer’s:

Polling showing favourability of different political leaders

In a recent article, we highlighted that the Labour Party’s approval had dipped further following the scandal around Peter Mandelson and his “best pal”, the dead paedophile Jeffry Epstein. Analysing data from YouGov, we found that approval of Labour’s performance was

  • 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.

This latest polling shows that Starmer’s plan to turn things around isn’t working.

Policy problems

Ipsos has provided polling on Starmer’s Digital ID plans, showing a slim majority in favour:


Other polls have found a slim majority against:

As Keiran Pedley notes, a politician could ‘sell’ this policy given those slim margins. The problem for Labour will be Starmer and his historically low approval ratings. In addition to this, every other party is opposing Digital ID. This means there’s potential for Starmer’s unpopularity to radicalise people against the policy, and for shifting opinions on Digital ID to further worsen Starmer’s favourability.

We can’t say how bad Starmer’s approval ratings will get, but we can say this; it’s going to be difficult for anyone to challenge the record he’s now set. God help us all if this isn’t the most unpopular PM of our lifetimes.

Featured image via Heute (license details)

By Willem Moore

This post was originally published on Canary.