Labour’s problems are piling up

Can things get any worse for Keir Starmer? Yes appears to be the answer, if the latest YouGov poll is anything to go on.

While the Tories have surged ahead to 43 per cent, support for Labour has tumbled down to 29 per cent. It’s important not to blow a single poll out of proportion, but nonetheless these numbers make for grim reading for the Labour leader. That 14 per cent lead for the Conservatives is the largest since mid-May 2020, when the recently elected Starmer was still digging his party out of the polling abyss of the Corbyn period. A year on – and coming weeks before a crucial set of local elections and a by-election – it shows all too clearly that Starmer has so far failed to rescue Labour. 

To make matters worse, Labour appears to be leaking voters in every direction: to the Tories, the Lib Dems – whose vote Starmer managed to cannibalise early in his leadership – and the Greens, who are probably a receptacle for a certain kind of young, hard-left voter.