Labour's collapse in 10 charts

A deep-dive into some shocking numbers on Starmer's government

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No, you’re not imagining it. Keir Starmer and the Labour government really are out-of-touch with the British people and are imploding in the polls.

And to show you just how badly the government is doing, only thirteen months after coming to power, let me walk you through Labour’s collapse in ten charts and why this is now one of the most unpopular governments in British history.

First. The national polls. Since coming to power little more than a year ago, Labour’s support in the polls has collapsed by around 10-points while the party has been replaced at the top of the polls by Nigel Farage and Reform.

This week, Reform, on 28 per cent, hold a 7-point lead over Labour, which is on just 21 per cent of the vote, and an 11-point lead over the Tories, who are still languishing on 17 per cent. Keir Starmer and Labour are retaining only 57 per cent of people who voted for them last year as many have defected to the Lib Dems, Greens, or Reform.

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Second. leadership. Keir Starmer, though never loved by the country, really has become an especially unpopular prime minister.

This summer, Starmer’s net rating has crashed to MINUS 44, with more than two-thirds of the entire country now thinking unfavourably of him.

This makes Starmer one of the most unpopular prime minister’s on record, even if you won’t hear much about this among a soft left media that had a total meltdown when Conservative Liz Truss plummeted to similarly low numbers.

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Third. The direction of the country. Long considered one of the most reliable measures of how people are thinking and feeling, when voters are asked whether they think Britain is heading in the right or wrong direction, an overwhelming majority, roughly two-thirds, now say ‘things are heading in the wrong direction’. Not even one in five people, just 17 per cent, think things in Britain are heading in the right direction —a damning assessment of the Labour government.

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Fourth. And this sense of national decline and deterioration is linked closely in the public mindset with Keir Starmer. Nearly half of all people now believe Keir Starmer “has changed Britain for the worse”, while only 19 per cent think he has “changed Britain for the better”. More people think Starmer has had a negative impact on the country than the share who felt the same about Boris Johnson in late 2021.

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Fifth. Competence. It is often said among pollsters that what determines the future of a party and government is the extent to which voters see them as competent. Well, here too, there is bad news for Labour as the share who view the Labour government as incompetent has been surging upwards, reaching close to 60 per cent of all voters. In fact, not even one in five Brits think the Labour government is competent.

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