JOHN Curtice has offered a damning assessment of Keir Starmer and Labour’s first year in power.
Speaking at a fringe event at the party’s conference in Liverpool on Monday morning, the pollster said Labour had suffered “the worst ever fall in support for a newly elected government”, having entered power on the lowest share of the vote for a winning party and facing a “deeply unhappy” electorate.
Asked whether there was any hope that Labour could turn it around, he initially remained silent – leading to laughs across the room.
He then replied: “The honest answer to that is no.”
The comments come after Keir Starmer was found to be the most unpopular prime minister on record as well as less popular in Scotland than Donald Trump, according to recent polls.
The findings by leading pollsters Ipsos suggested that just 13% of voters are satisfied with the job he is doing, compared to 79% who are unsatisfied.
With a net satisfaction rating of -66, that puts Starmer lower than previous lows for Rishi Sunak and John Major.
Curtice added that “clearly, if by 2029 the economy is turned around and if by 2029 the waiting lists are way, way back down”, Labour might be able to recover its position.
But he also cast doubt on whether Starmer would be able to capitalise on such a situation, saying he had cast himself as “the friendly local plumber” fixing issues with “policy pipes”, when voters really wanted their leaders to be “the architect of Valhalla”.
Curtice said: “You need to do more than change the reality, you also have to influence perception.
“And clearly, the question that is being raised about the current Labour leadership is, does it have the ability to change the mind?”
Saying people still did not know what Starmer stood for, he said: “The mystery of Keir Starmer, who is he, what does he stand for, that mystery, we are maybe two-thirds of the way through the novel, but we are still not sure where the body lies.”
The polling expert also said that Labour focusing on Reform UK is a “mistake” as the party loses more support to the LibDems and Greens.
He then suggested Labour should not “repeat the Tories’ mistake” of focusing on immigration.
