Keir Starmer’s polling calamity

Politicians’ popularity only tends to go in one direction: down. John Major entered office in 1990 with a net satisfaction rating of +15 and left it having lost 42 points. Tony Blair moved into Downing Street in 1997 with an approval rating of +60 points. When he handed over to Gordon Brown in 2007, he’d fallen to -27. Where you start can make all the difference. If things are only going to go one way, you want as handsome a starting margin as possible. 

Bad news for Keir Starmer then, who has seen his popularity drop at the fastest rate of any Prime Minister other than Liz Truss. The Ipsos political monitor survey – which has been tracking Prime Ministerial performance for nearly half a century – has Starmer falling from +7 in July (the first PM to start in the positive since Theresa May) to -21: a 14-point swing in the matter of a few weeks.

Starmer is not likely to see his popularity plummet as quickly as Liz Truss.