British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s popularity has sunk to its lowest level ever as large swaths of his leftist Labour Party base appear to be having doubts about his leadership.
According to a survey from YouGov, nearly seven in ten Britons have a negative view of Prime Minister Starmer, with voters across the political spectrum turning against the government. The survey found that a record low of 23 per cent hold a favourable view of the PM, down by five points since last month.
The pollster said that it is the first time it has recorded a net negative approval for Starmer among voters of his left-wing Labour Party, with 50 per cent holding an unfavourable opinion of their leader, compared to 45 per cent who still approve of his leadership.
While Starmer’s popularity has declined by five points, his chief rival, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, has seen his popularity jump by five points, from 27 per cent last month to 32 per cent now. Farage’s rise has even seen his popularity surpass Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch among Tory Party supporters by a margin of 50 to 49 per cent.
The problems for Labour don’t end with Starmer, with just 59 per cent of voters who backed the party in last year’s general elections still holding a positive view of the party. YouGov noted that “even among their own voters, Labour are now no more popular than the Greens.”
Overall, 65 per cent of British voters said they have an unfavourable opinion of Labour, an increase of four points over last month and the highest recorded by the pollster since it began asking the question in June of 2017.
The poll comes after Starmer attempted to tack to the right politically this week on migration, announcing plans to reduce the number of arrivals and admitting that the open borders agenda has failed to deliver on its central promise of economic prosperity and has degraded British society.
The speech drew heavy backlash from leftist members of the Labour Party and from the liberal establishment media, both of which have long promoted the supposed benefits of flooding the country with cheap foreign workers.
The left accused Starmer of “echoing” former Conservative parliamentarian and anti-mass migration prophet Enoch Powell with his warning that Britain risks becoming an “island of strangers.” Critics quickly pointed out the similarity to a line from Powell’s famed 1968 “Rivers of Blood” speech, in which he warned of the negative impacts on cultural cohesion of the mass importation of different cultures into the country.
While the speech drew praise from the political right in the UK, with even Nigel Farage saying that he “very much enjoyed” the speech, it appears to have driven a wedge within the Labour Party.
According to a separate poll from Thinks Insight & Strategy for PoliticsHome, 52 per cent of those who voted for Labour in last July’s general election said that they would consider voting for either the Liberal Democrats or the Greens. Additionally, a quarter of Labour voters said they would consider backing Farage’s Reform UK.
Ben Shimshon, co-founder and CEO of Thinks Insight & Strategy, said: “These results illustrate the tightrope this Labour government are walking… The government has a big majority, but a shallow one, and the coalition that they assembled in 2024 looks very precarious, only nine months later.”
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