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Good morning. As long-term readers will know, I prefer to use Ipsos polling where possible because it is the UK’s oldest pollster, and I like to use the longest available data set.
Today I like Ipsos even more because it has given us its latest set of polling as an exclusive. It makes for grim reading for Keir Starmer and the Labour party — but also for the leaderless Conservatives. Some more thoughts on that below.
Inside Politics is edited by Harvey Nriapia today. Read the previous edition of the newsletter here. Please send gossip, thoughts and feedback to insidepolitics@ft.com
Labour pains
Half of all British voters say they are disappointed in how Labour has governed thus far, as both the government’s overall ratings and the prime minister’s have continued to decline.
How worried should Keir Starmer be? Well, his approval rating is worse now after 77 days in office than any of his predecessors bar Liz Truss.
However, the more interesting comparison points, I think, are with the first-term prime ministers who have been re-elected since Ipsos (then RSL) began measuring approval ratings: Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and David Cameron. Both Thatcher and Cameron’s ratings hit lower depths in their first terms than Starmer’s have now. Both those low points, I would note, came after the very painful Budgets of 1981 and 2012.
One short-term problem that Starmer has is that essentially everyone is anticipating a very painful Budget on October 30, and almost everyone thinks they will be the ones feeling the pain. But if, just as by 2015 and 1983, Rachel Reeves’s decisions mean that she can deliver more expansive Budgets later down the line, that will not be an issue for long. It’s a bigger problem that in addition to spooking voters electorally, Labour seem to be worrying them economically, as consumer confidence has toppled per figures released this morning.
A bigger problem, I think, is the bad smell given off by the stories about donations of clothes, glasses and free tickets. Yes, they are all within the rules, but I think they a) look a bit dodgy, and b) more damagingly, look a bit ridiculous. Looking ridiculous is a very dangerous place for a political party to be, because if you are not seen as serious and by extension competent then it is harder to convince people you are going to make their lives better.
Also, it’s easy to see what will lift perceptions of Starmer and the government’s effectiveness: it is the government actually delivering things, particularly on the NHS (more than two-thirds of people tell Ipsos that turning around the NHS is the most important of Labour’s five missions — just 22 per cent currently think they are doing a good job of delivering that, though). And, as Alex Thomas notes in a smart blog over at the Institute for Government, some of this is about weaknesses at the centre of government that Starmer could and should fix.
Given that “invent time travel and don’t accept three grands’ worth of glasses” is not an option, it is a political wound that Starmer will just have to live with. He’ll have to hope it is a political wound like “David Cameron driving his bicycle to work with a car driving behind him”, which kept coming up in focus groups throughout his premiership but did not stop him winning. Rather that than a political wound like “Boris Johnson’s illegal lockdown-breaking parties”.
But the good news for Starmer is that people don’t think much of the Conservatives either: indeed Labour is still more popular (or more accurately they are less unpopular) than the Tory party overall.
While many more people voted for minor parties at the last election than for a century — excellent column by Robert Shrimsley on that here — my instinct is that how people feel about the two biggest parties is still the most important variable. People understand perfectly well how our electoral system works. If you were voting for a smaller party to Labour’s left, like the Greens, both your level of enthusiasm for Labour and the amount you feared a Conservative government mattered. If you were voting for the Liberal Democrats, your antipathy to the Tory party and your lack of concern about a Labour government mattered. And if you were voting Reform, your indifference to the Conservative party and your willingness to facilitate a Labour victory mattered.
Both parties have major challenges to overcome over the next five years. In some ways, the biggest question is whether you would rather be the prime minister having to turn around the condition of the country’s public services and infrastructure, or the leader of the opposition having to turn around a tattered brand.
Now try this
I had a lovely time last night seeing the terrific Laura Misch at the Union Chapel. You can listen to her brilliant new album Sample the Earth here, which I will be doing myself as I take the train to Liverpool for the Labour party conference.
