Labour leader Keir Starmer is officially the least popular prime minister ever. But polling expert John Curtice insists that Starmer’s wrong to keep chasing far-right votes. Because it’s not immigration that’s really pushing vast numbers of 2024 Labour voters away. It’s the government’s utter failure to improve the NHS and the economy.
Sort out the NHS and the economy!
Speaking to Times Radio on 29 September, Curtice said:
When you actually take people’s evaluations of the state of the economy, the state of the NHS, and what they think has been happening to immigration, and you look at that amongst those people who voted for Labour 12 months ago and then look to see ‘well, what is the link between those perceptions and their probability of saying they will vote Labour again?’, you actually discover it’s the perceptions of the economy and perceptions of the NHS that are the real two things: those people who think that the economy is doing badly, those who think the NHS is in a poor state… Those are the perceptions that really push people away from Labour.
People do mention immigration, but he insisted that it’s “nothing like as important, at least for 2024 Labour voters”. And on that note, he stressed that the idea Labour is primarily losing voters to Reform is “completely wrong”. Reform’s votes, he asserted, are mainly coming from former Conservatives or Brexit supporters. Some 2024 Labour voters are moving to Reform, yes, but almost twice as many are jumping to the Green Party and the Liberal Democrats.
This echoes what another survey said back in April, that Labour is much more at risk of losing 2024 voters to the Liberal Democrats and Greens than to Reform. As that survey revealed, a focus on increasing funding for the NHS and taxes on the richest 1% of earners would help to stop Labour from haemorrhaging votes across the board.
Starmer’s soullessness is the problem
The current Labour government seems to have no interest in U-turning on either the NHS or the economy. Its very cosy relationship with the rich and powerful would make that too hard. The Starmer project was always about serving those elite interests by crushing the Labour left, and that’s why it has so few desirable principles or policies to offer. As Curtice stressed:
People don’t know what Keir Starmer stands for. What is he wanting to do? What kind of country does he want to create? And we see today in the latest poll that now, if anything, people are even less clear about what Keir Starmer stands for – now that he’s been prime minister for 15 months – than was the case before he became prime minister. And therefore, it’s the sense that this isn’t a government that has a clear sense of direction that is, I think, the problem.
At a Labour conference event, meanwhile, Curtice highlighted why both Reform’s Nigel Farage and Green leader Zack Polanski are gaining momentum as Starmer flounders:
Labour needs to tell the country what it stands for, what it believes in and link that to how it’s going to get there … The art of politics is the ability to articulate a synoptic vision which is illustrated through particular policy proposals.
The fascinating thing about where we are at the moment is that [Keir] Starmer hasn’t been able to do it… [Nigel] Farage can do it and maybe [Zack] Polanski can as well.
The soullessness of Starmer’s government, he pointed out, has led to “the worst ever fall in support for a newly elected government”. And it would be a “mistake”, he asserted, to centre immigration and Reform in any comeback effort. Because as he emphasised in the Times Radio interview:
There is no doubt that, if this government is going to recover in the polls, the economy has to be turned around and the public services, particularly the NHS, have to be turned around. Those are the crucial challenges facing this government.
Featured image via YouTube screenshot/Times Radio Politics
By Ed Sykes
This post was originally published on Canary.