Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is now more unpopular than former Tory PM Rishi Sunak, which is quite a feat.
His approval rating has dropped by an incredible 45 points to -26% since the July general election, according to a poll for The Observer (The Guardian’s Sunday sister paper).
This drastic turn of events has come about while Starmer has shown his inability to tackle illegal migration; released thousands of prisoners—including serious sexual offenders, despite assurances to the contrary—earlier than normal; announced a crackdown on smoking in smoking areas; and, most recently, been revealed to have accepted far more in freebies and gifts than any other recent party leader.
That news of Starmer’s acceptance of £100,000’s worth (€119k) of gifts, including donations for clothes and free concert tickets, came at the same time as the nation reeled at Labour’s decision to scrap winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners. This has been a particular cause of outrage.
As STV News’ Paris Gourtsoyannis put it to the prime minister himself: “You earn £167,000 (€199,800) per year. If you need help buying your wardrobe, why shouldn’t pensioners on £13,000 (€15,500) a year get help with their heating bills?”
Most of his cabinet has been accepting donations too, including for a birthday party. Few have been impressive with their lines of defence. For example, education secretary Bridget Phillipson effectively threw her children under the bus over her accepting freebies from a donor, saying it was “hard” to turn down free tickets for a Taylor Swift concert because “one of my children was keen to go along.”
It is no wonder, then, that top officials are starting to lose patience. The Daily Telegraph quoted one “well-connected source” working in Whitehall, the home of British governance, who said the PM has “four weeks” to prove that his government is not “dysfunctional.”
Top officials also appear to be losing confidence in those working alongside Starmer, including chancellor Rachel Reeves. Elsewhere, the paper reports that “some in Whitehall ask if she’s up to” the job.
And there were boos at the party’s conference—its first in government in 14 years—this morning as a key internal vote on Reeves’ decision to scrap winter fuel payments was pushed back by two days (The schedule for this afternoon is, apparently, “too busy”). Unions are working hard to ensure that when the vote finally takes place, the Labour conference will demand that the scrap be reversed.
This would humiliate the already-embattled prime minister by calling into question his authority. One “Starmer loyalist” told Politico that the wording of the reversal motion is “bad news for us.” It’s likely that that is putting it rather lightly.
