Keir Starmer's first 3 months as Prime Minister: Unpopular, Untrusted and Unwanted

Today marks exactly 3 months since Labour’s election victory, and thus an appropriate time to assess Keir Starmer’s start to his tenure as Prime Minister.

Few PMs have been so unpopular so quickly, and perhaps this is to be expected, given his loveless landslide in July. Starmer was never a widely popular politician, who, as I repeatedly predicted in the months preceding, went into Number 10 riding a wave of anti-Tory backlash. He, more than any other politician in our history, benefitted from the ills of First-Past-the-Post, securing 63% of the seats in Parliament on under 34% of the vote.

A week after the election, I predicted that Labour would be unpopular quickly, given the issues they inherited from the Tories, particularly dealing with illegal immigration.

I was right.

Starmer has seen his public popularity plummet, internal disputes brewing within the Labour party, and scandals dominating media headlines.

And the worst could still be to come...

The stats

To give some perspective to Starmer’s unpopularity, it helps to assess his polling versus the last 2 times government changed hands; in 2010 and 1997.

3 months after his landslide election victory in 1997, 65% of voters said they were satisfied with Tony Blair as PM, with just 19% dissatisfied. (net +41)

Cameron was less popular than Blair, but still enjoyed positive ratings in 2010, with 57% of voters satisfied, and 33% dissatisfied. (net +24)

In a recent Opinium poll, Starmer had a net approval rating of -26, with 50% disapproving of the job he is doing as PM, and just 24% approving. This represents a 45-point drop since July, and makes him more unpopular than outgoing Tory Prime Minister Rishi Sunak - who was notorious for his dire polling ratings.

Governments usually enjoy a so-called ‘honeymoon’ period for the first few months. Starmer clearly hasn’t with a More in Common poll finding that voters narrowly preferred Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government (31%) to Starmer’s Labour (29%).

It’s not just Starmer who is unpopular, but Labour too.

In the 55 council-by elections since the general election in July, Labour have lost 9 seats, with the Tories, Greens, SNP and Reform UK, all making gains.

After 12 weeks in government, Starmer’s Labour ranked 18th out of 19 election winners since 1955 in terms of change in voting intention. Newly released election projections have them losing voters and seats, with their opponents all making gains.

Whats gone wrong?

Starmer himself was talking about a ‘decade of national renewal’. This was supposed to be a minimum two-term Labour government.

This all begs the question, what has gone wrong for Keir Starmer?

Winter Fuel Allowance

The biggest issue tanking Starmer’s approval ratings has been the removal of pensioner’s winter fuel allowance. Upon assuming office, Chancellor Rachel Reeves declared that the Tories had left a ￡22 billion black hole in public finances, and that spending cuts were necessary.

One of these cuts was the payments given to pensioners to help them with their heating costs during the winter, given their vulnerability to ill health and death in cold homes.

The decision was met with huge backlash from opposition parties and the general public. Upon closer inspection around ￡9 billion of the ‘black hole’ was thanks to public sector pay rises, which Labour granted. The Tories accused Reeves and Starmer of pleasing their trade-union paymasters, and plunging pensioners into poverty, with the Lib Dems and SNP calling it a new age of Westminster austerity.

This move looked particularly bad for a number of reasons.

• As mentioned, around half of the ￡22 billion black hole was due to spending commitments Labour knowingly made
• Starmer had been a long-time critic of the Tory record on energy bills, and attacked Rishi Sunak when it emerged that his government had considered scrapping the winter fuel payment
• Starmer promised that energy bills would go down if Labour won the election. Not only have they gone up, but vulnerable pensioners have had vital support, worth around ￡300, removed.
• The government has pledged to spend billions on other projects, like GB Energy, overseas climate aid, and military support for Ukraine.

Labour’s conference members even voted for a motion to reverse the cuts to winter fuel allowance.

Prisoners Released

To alleviate prison overcrowding, the government has decided to release around 5,500 prisoners before the end of their sentence. This was an issue they inherited from the previous Conservative government, which in fairness to Starmer, wasn’t fully apparent until he assumed office.

Opponents have argued that the measure was badly handled and not entirely necessary. UK prisons host around 11,000 foreign criminals, who are unable to be deported, meanwhile dangerous criminals are released back onto our streets.

Celebratory scenes were witnessed outside prisons when many were released, and it emerged that some were not fitted with ankle tags.

The government insisted that the alternative to early releases would be the collapse of the justice system, with judges unable to issue sentences because there would be nowhere to house the offenders. Despite this, many of those arrested in connection with this summer’s riots have been swiftly sentenced and locked up, putting doubt over the aforementioned claim.

Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood even suggested that inmates who are homeless upon release can be placed in taxpayer funded hotels.

The 2-child benefit cap

The first headache for Starmer’s government was the 2-child benefit cap. The omission of a plan to scrap this policy from the King Speech angered MPs, with the SNP tabling an amendment to address the issue.

7 Labour MPs voted in favour of the amendment, all from the pro-Corbyn faction of the party, forcing Starmer to suspend them. Many more Labour MPs abstained, but the SNP’s amendment was still comprehensively defeated given Starmer’s huge parliamentary majority.

The IFS estimated that removing the cap could lift 250,000 children out of poverty, and would cost the government an extra ￡3.4 billion a year. This parliamentary vote ironically came a week after Starmer pledged ￡3 billion of support for Ukraine in their war against Russia, and declared that they would receive this amount every year for “as long as takes”.

The message to the public was:

“There’s money to fund a foreign war, but not money to help poor children"

It reflected Starmer’s unwillingness to make extra spending commitments, with him and Rachel Reeves keen to appear economically competent, and prevent a repeat of Liz Truss’ 2022 mini-budget.

But given that Deputy PM Angela Rayner advocated to scrap the cap back in 2020, and the policy being supported by the majority of left-leaning Brits, the move was seen as highly controversial and uncompassionate by Starmer.

Free-Gear-Keir

Keir Starmer has come under increasing scrutiny for the extortionate amount of gifts he received during the last parliament, totalling around ￡107,000 since 2019. He was actually 1st out of all MPs in terms donations received.

The problem for a lot of the public was not necessarily the donations, but the hypocrisy. Starmer has previously pledged to “clean up” British politics, and lead a “government of service”. Now it appears he is just like other politicians who abuse their status and fame to get freebies.

Many have argued that Tory corruption far exceeds this, and they’d be right. But the hypocrisy of Starmer is what has angered the public, and why it has garnered such media scrutiny.

This week Starmer actually pledged to pay back ￡6,000 of gifts, which included Taylor Swift tickets, and a designer clothing for his wife - essentially an admission that he was wrong to accept the donations.

The scandal led to the resignation of Labour MP Rosie Duffield, who said Starmer’s “sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice are off the scale”.

He posed as a man of integrity during the election campaign, a man who would come into Downing Street to serve the British people. Now the public see him as yet another Champagne Socialist.

Doom and gloom

A growing accusation levelled at Starmer is that his government lacks optimism, and paints a gloomy picture of the UK’s future. A speech he delivered in late August warned voters that things will “get worse before they get better” and that October’s Autumn Budget would be “painful”.

Much of his first 3 months in office have been spent deploring their inheritance from the Tories, citing the state of public finances, prisons and the NHS.

This rhetoric, along with the highly controversial plans to outlaw smoking in pub gardens, have earned Starmer the reputation as a ‘doom and gloom’ Prime Minister intent on talking down the UK’s prospects and taking away our fun.

On the steps of Downing Street on July 5th, he pledged to “tred more lightly” on the lives of voters. Fast forward three months, he declares that the new budget will contain “big asks” of everybody, and announces new nanny state policies to outlaw smoking.

Conclusions

All of these scandals have broken the trust of voters, and this isn’t even mentioning his failure to address illegal immigration, the relative economic stagnation since July, and the impending tax rises in the Autumn Budget.

After just 3 months, Starmer has been embroiled in a series of scandals that have tanked his public popularity. And he wasn’t that popular to begin with.

He has sent a very bad message to the public; removing payments for vulnerable pensioners whilst giving train drivers a ￡10k pay-rise, promising to clean up politics and then accepting thousands in designer clothes for his wife, and releasing dangerous criminals back onto our streets.

This isn’t to say that Starmer hasn’t got anything right. He dealt with this summer’s riots well, Labour’s radical housebuilding programme shows promise, and his aim to reform the NHS, rather than pouring in more money, is a noble one.

But the overwhelming story has been one of scandal and a short honeymoon period.

Just 3 months into the job, Starmer is unpopular, untrusted and unwanted.

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