Last September, just two months after Labour’s election, Keir Starmer declared that his government was “going to have to be unpopular”. That has proved to be one of the Prime Minister’s safer predictions. Earlier this week Labour achieved another unwelcome milestone: its net approval rating fell to -56, matching the level recorded by the Conservatives just before the 2024 election.
Some will conclude from this that the government can simply do no right in the eyes of a disillusioned electorate. But this isn’t quite true. Polling by More in Common shows that policies such as the Ukraine negotiations, the minimum wage increase, the Renters’ Rights Bill and the sewage bill are both popular and salient. For the public, however, these are far eclipsed by failures such as the winter fuel payment cuts, an excessively gloomy narrative and a lack of clear purpose.
Yet it isn’t only Labour’s descent into unpopularity that is striking – British politics is defined by it. Not one of the current party leaders enjoys a positive approval rating according to YouGov. Nigel Farage, the man cast as an electoral pied piper, is almost as unpopular as the becalmed Kemi Badenoch. Jeremy Corbyn, the insurgent eyeing a second coming, is still more unpopular than both. Ed Davey emerges as the most popular leader but he is flattered by his greater obscurity: 38 per cent of voters don’t have an opinion on him.
Though Reform now comfortably leads among every pollster, this is some way short of a truly popular revolt. Back in 1981, the SDP-Liberal Alliance, invoked again in recent months, once achieved a rating of 50.5 per cent; Reform is currently averaging 29 per cent.
What we are witnessing, in short, is a war of the weak. Labour is an unpopular incumbent and the Tories an unforgiven opposition. Farage and Corbyn are daring but divisive (both, with telling symmetry, are disliked by 61 per cent of the electorate).
Who wins in this strange new universe? Pollsters and commentators have traditionally defined British elections as a battle for the “centre ground”. Swing voters – who would oscillate between the Conservatives and Labour – were prized above all.
But this conventional fight, some in Westminster argue, has now been supplanted by another. A private polling presentation by Stack Data Strategy – co-founded by Ameet Gill, a former strategist to David Cameron – instead frames British politics as a struggle between left and right coalitions. In an era when the winning post is closer to 30 per cent than 40 per cent, the side which triumphs will be that which best preserves its base.
The risk for Labour is that while the right-wing vote consolidates around Reform, the left-wing vote fragments. Since the general election, Farage has won over almost a third of 2024 Tories (29 per cent). Labour, meanwhile, has shed votes to the Lib Dems (13 per cent) and the Greens (9 per cent). A new left party, already polling as high as 15 per cent in some surveys, threatens only to maximise this disunity.
How does Labour prevent this trend giving Farage an electoral shortcut to No 10? It’s a question Starmer will soon need to show his party he has an answer to.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
[See also: What the Bell Hotel closure reveals about the asylum housing stalemate]
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