Dire polling exposes the emptiness of Labour’s mythic plan

A new poll has the governing party on 29%, just four points behind a Conservative Party that was just obliterated at the polls, and which is now essentially leaderless.

To put that in perspective, The Economist’s political data scientist, Owen Winter, compared the polling average to other prime ministers. It took John Major 397 days before plummeting below 30 points in the polling, and that was after 14 years of Tory rule. Harold Wilson took 664 days to suffer the same fate, the hideously embattled Theresa May took 664 days, while Tony Blair took 1104 days after his 1997 Labour landside. It has taken Keir Starmer’s Labour just 70 days.

It is worth reminding ourselves that – earlier this year – Labour had an average polling lead of 20 points. Around the time that Rishi Sunak called the election, Labour were scoring between 45 and 48 points.

READ MORE: Scottish Labour: Anas Sarwar challenged on rent control bill support

Yes, it has been under-discussed how the polling industry suffered yet another disaster – on top of getting the 2015 and 2017 elections wrong: Labour winning a landslide as expected masked the failure this time, but the final polling overstated Starmer’s triumph by more than five points.

Nonetheless, it is clear that Labour haemorrhaged support during the election campaign – despite the Tories running their worst election campaign since the universal franchise. Labour had precious enthusiasm to begin with, having won the lowest share of the vote of any successful party in history, with the lowest turnout of the democratic era.

You would at least expect Labour to have a honeymoon. After all, they just ejected a uniquely dire government which had overseen the worst squeeze in wages since the 19th century, disintegrating public services and never-ending turmoil and scandal. According to Ipsos, Starmer’s approval ratings are now minus 16, the worst since the party disastrously lost the Hartlepool by-election in May 2021, while YouGov has him on minus 21, a drop of 21 points in a few weeks.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves, meanwhile, is also on minus 21 favourability according to Ipsos. YouGov’s latest polling this week on the Government’s overall approval ratings is even bleaker: just 19% approve, with 55% disapproving. 

What is going on here? Starmer’s supporters have a simple explanation. Labour have a dire inheritance – what do you expect?

This is a pitiful explanation. Voters are not stupid. They do not expect miracle results after just two months in office. What they do expect is some sort of plan. As I warned during the election campaign in this newspaper during the election, Labour were going to “discover” a £20 billion black hole when they won. Because they kept the Tories’ fiscal rule and refused to raise taxes on the booming rich, that would mean cuts.

Sure enough, Starmer came to power declaring things would get worse before they got better.

His government launched an attack on the Winter Fuel Payment, announcing it would be means-tested – in practise stripping it from hundreds of thousands of pensioners below the poverty line, eligible for pension credit but not in receipt of it, while hammering many more just above the threshold who are struggling.

He not only refused to repeal the two-child benefit cap which drives so many children into poverty, he booted out Labour MPs who voted to get rid of it. The upcoming Budget is expected to include yet more real-terms cuts to already battered government departments.

(Image: PA)

After 14 years of decline, chaos and stagnation, voters are entitled to expect some optimism and change from a Labour Government. Instead they are being told to expect more attacks on living standards, children and pensioners driven into hardship, and even more austerity.

This is all because of Labour’s choices. Given the wealthiest 350 British households in The Sunday Times Rich List have combined fortunes equivalent to the entire Polish economy, the Government could have promised meaningful tax hikes on our thriving elite. They choose to instead demand sacrifice from those already condemned to misery and hardship.

During the election campaign, a well-connected Labour figure told me that many had an expectation that Reeves and Starmer had a secret plan in a drawer somewhere. I was assured that no such plan exists.

They bet the house on somehow growth reviving, even though the British economic model has produced weak growth now since the 1980s, and nothing Labour suggest represents a rupture from that.

If a new government is already unpopular to such an unprecedented level just two months after the ejection of its catastrophic predecessors, what do you expect to happen?

Those around Starmer have spite for the left, and very little else.

They won the election thanks to Tory self-destruction: now the Conservatives are out, they are being judged on their own vision, and it simply doesn’t exist.

For those of us with a progressive inclination, however, this poses a challenge. The radical right is surging across the Western world – and that includes Nigel Farage’s Reform here. If we don’t get our act together, deeply sinister vultures will feast from the carcass of a festering Labour administration.