Voters simply haven’t taken to the party leader and that’s becoming impossible to ignore. Presenting the public at the next election with a figure they don’t like, rate or agree with would be madness. So at some stage a new leader will have to be installed.
There are certainly some mutterings to this effect in Tory circles, about Kemi Badenoch. But the die is not cast on that. Instead, we must look across the aisle to find the leader who has reached the point of no return.
Cold, aloof, po-faced and priggish, the PM has set about alienating vast swathes of the electorate at breakneck pace
Perhaps this sounds counterintuitive given that Keir Starmer sits at the head of an army of more than 400 Labour MPs? Yet everything about him is a disaster for their prospects of getting re-elected. Cold, aloof, po-faced and priggish, the Prime Minister has set about alienating vast swathes of the electorate at breakneck pace.
His policy agenda is a voter-repellent disaster: from crass economic mismanagement to the hijacking of school standards, prohibitively expensive energy zealotry to unilateral legislative disarmament in the face of illegal migration.
Then there is the grubby surrender of the Chagos Islands at the behest of a conclave of international lawyers seeking to act ultra vires: the most disgustingly anti-patriotic policy advanced by any British government in living memory. And shot through with a deadly symbolism about the values of the man who thinks it the right thing to do.
The polling tells the story of Starmer’s seven-month car crash more dispassionately. Not just a miserable election day vote share of 34 per cent having slumped to an average 25 per cent in his “honeymoon” debut year, but disastrous ratings on key issues too.
YouGov finds that the share of the electorate thinking Labour is the best party on the economy has fallen from 29 per cent at the end of July, to 18 per cent now. On health policy, the slide has been from 41 per cent to 26 per cent in the same period. On immigration and asylum from 26 per cent to 17 per cent. On law and order from 28 per cent to 19 per cent.
Then there is Starmer’s personal polling. He was never popular. YouGov had him on -7 per cent back in August, based on subtracting those thinking he was doing a bad job from those saying a good job. Now that score is -40.
The pollster Ipsos UK asks a key underlying question of voters every now and again: is Britain heading in the right or wrong direction? Back in August, 52 per cent said wrong. Now it is a crushing 62 per cent, compared to just 16 per cent saying right. Ipsos also finds Starmer in freefall on the question of whether he has a plan to make the country a better place. Just 27 per cent say he does, compared to 50 per cent last July.
Incumbent prime ministers almost never recover from scores like these without a remarkable series of victories and vindications (think Margaret Thatcher from 1981 to 1983). Where is Starmer’s Falklands or economic renaissance? Perhaps in the hostelries of Hampstead they view the Chagos surrender as a proud moment in the rise of the “Global South”. But such opinions don’t travel well to other parts of Britain.
Even in the absence of an alternative Labour figure with obviously much broader electoral appeal, I have become convinced that Starmer will not be permitted to lead his party into the next election. Why so?
Take a look at the overall pattern of public opinion. The Spectator’s poll tracker tells us Reform and Labour are locked together on 25 per cent, with the Tories averaging 22 per cent. So long as the split on the right remains unresolved and bitter, there is the prospect that Labour could win another majority on an even lower vote share than it achieved in July. Perhaps 30 per cent would be sufficient.
So Labour would not need a Blair manque with unrealistic aspirations of hitting 40 per cent – sorry Wes Streeting – just someone with a personality and kerb appeal to the various blocks which make up the core vote: public sector workers, retired public sector workers, trade unionists, Muslim voters, identity politics factions of the alphabet soup variety and Guardian-reading urban women.
Were I a betting man, I’d be putting my tenner on deputy prime minister Angela Rayner stepping into those little shoes of Starmer’s well before the next election hoves into view.
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