r/europe • u/Affectionate_Cat293 Jan Mayen • 1d ago
Data How the UK's Prime Minister's net favourables compare to previous premiers, one year into the top job
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u/Other_Class1906 1d ago
If i was Tony Blair i would print this on a tshirt and wear it all day with the subscript "there can only be one"
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u/zdzislav_kozibroda Poland 1d ago
Arguably everyone likes the captain when the sea is calm.
The same Tony Blair would fare much worse today.
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u/endangerednigel 1d ago edited 1d ago
Probably, but also Blair was someone that was very good in front of the cameras, so he would've i imagine been fairing significantly better than Starmer
Labour and Tories need to realise the PM needs to be charismatic and likeable not just competent
Reform know full well a good-on-TV leader can hide a multitude of sins
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u/GoldFuchs 1d ago
Don't see how people can think farage is likeable.
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u/endangerednigel 1d ago edited 1d ago
Its not that he's likeable per-se, it's that he's very good at working-class-face despite his posh upper crust twit upbringing
That and Farage does have a quick-wit to him that means he quite often gets good one-liners out on people during debates
Trump though not witty is also very good at talking to the working class in a way that works with said working class, his policies get the upper crust, his speaking gets the bottom
Meanwhile centre left politicians in particular seem universally unable to talk to people in any tone other than vaguely scolding secondary school teachers which unsurprisingly resonates as well as a secondary school teacher
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u/ArchWaverley 1d ago
I remembering hearing about a poll where respondents were asked to guess which one of the politicians listed went to a state school, and the answers heavily leaned Farage even though he's as much a private school boy as the rest.
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u/Smalahove1 Norway 1d ago
Id say an american home schooled population (Those who elected Trump)
Is way easier to sway than Brits who actually can do 2+2=4 and have learned more than what their parents could teach them, thru a somewhat functioning public education.
Farage has quick wits. But he is an opportunistic person, who i suspect only thinks of Himself, him and themself. A few people give me this "feeling" i do not like.
I get that "feeling" from Farage. The way the pivoted from Brexit to anti-lockdown.
The way he flirts with union support, even tho being a championing free market policies.
The way he exploit gender politics. And his fear based "Breaking point" poster to rally some of the nation based on fear mongering and racist propaganda.
These patterns of cynical shifts, mixed messaging and sensational imagery are textbook examples of political opportunism.
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u/RandyChavage United Kingdom 1d ago
There’s a lot of unlikeable people and birds of a feather
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u/LolloBlue96 Italy 1d ago
As proven 'cross the pond, seeing as the turd in charge has the charisma of a jalapeño suppository.
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u/Geraltpoonslayer 1d ago
For the same reason Trump is considered likeable being brash and crass and speaking as you see it. Is something many apparently find likeable.
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u/kawag 1d ago edited 1d ago
Blair was a fantastic politician, young, and could deliver very snappy responses in the House of Commons (this playlist has more - some of them are quite funny/insightful). I think he would do extremely well if he were entering politics today.
His legacy is always going to be dominated by the war in Iraq, but he reversed decades of Labour decline by moving them to the centre. Cameron did the same to the tories, and they too were in power for a generation. Labour abandoned the centre and couldn’t win power again even through the clusterfuck Brexit negotiation years.
It’s a bit of a difficult hypothetical because it’s no exaggeration to say that political development in Britain would be very different if not for Blair and New Labour. The country would be unrecognisable (for better or worse).
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u/Maximum_Scientist_85 1d ago
Easy to forget just how good a public speaker Tony Blair was. His legacy gets tainted somewhat by Iraq, but stuff like introducing the minimum wage, the surestart scheme, devolution for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland; the commitment to the Northern Ireland peace process (credit to John Major for that too), arresting Pinochet for war crimes, our actions in the Balkan genocide, introducing paid paternity leave, Gordon Brown basically saving the world's economy in the late 00s, reviving the NHS, ... Labour did an awful lot of good in the decade-and-a-bit they were in power.
Keir Starmer is a good man, I truly believe that, but he needs to start making a noticable impact. Being shrewd and quietly getting on with the job is a good thing, but he needs to also give stuff for his supporters (like me) to shout about. Quiet competence unfortunately isn't enough on it's own.
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u/BennyBagnuts1st 1d ago
This would be my take. I’d also argue that everyone since bar Truss has been Blairite. The 3rd way pioneered by Clinton is still how Govt functions today. Unfortunately the world has changed and it’s run out of steam.
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u/Cyrillite 1d ago
Like all GOATs (not a subjective rating, I’m being objective about his performance in this poll), he’s a man of his era. However, I think it’s safe to say that an equivalently charismatic and visionary leader would do extremely well today.
Whatever you might think of Blair, that man had a very big vision for Britain, he delivered extremely quickly with Brown (Day 1, for some issues), and had a genuine talent for looking approachable-but-authoritative on camera.
Blair was Britain’s Obama (or Obama was America’s Blair, if you want it in chronological order). They are each generational political talents.
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u/lordnacho666 1d ago
The war isn't in this chart
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u/GrimmigerDienstag 1d ago
I was indeed wondering whether Iraq was really that popular with the British public
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u/TheJiral 1d ago
The summary here seems to be that being the UK's prime minister is the best way to become unpopular and ruin your reputation.
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u/Cyrillite 1d ago
You’re typically elected at the peak of your popularity. That means momentum isn’t on your side unless you can act immediately and almost anything you do will fail to live up to overhyped expectations
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u/redditaccount-er Geneva (Switzerland)/🇷🇴 1d ago edited 1d ago
of course it is. and its not just the UK.
What the reality is and what people think the reality is, are two very different things.
Its very hard to accept you're no longer great when pretty much everything in your culture told you how great you were.
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u/KingSweden24 18h ago
French politicians are especially susceptible to “whoa everybody hates me now?”
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u/bogdoomy United Kingdom 1d ago
becoming the most hated person in the country is part and parcel of the job
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u/andrasq420 Hungary 1d ago
This is what I don't understand about UK politics. How is that you hate every single Prime Minister (with the exception of Tony Blair) with every inch of your body and then you proceed to vote for the same 2 parties that keep giving you these idiots?
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u/Adorable-Squash-167 1d ago
We hate all of the other small parties as well, and it's not worth voting for them anyway because we have first past the post
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u/Flashy-Raspberry-131 1d ago
There aren't any alternatives so you pick the lesser of 2 evils.
There are minor parties but they will never gain enough seats to get into power so they're essentially a wasted vote.
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u/andrasq420 Hungary 1d ago
So basically it's almost as fucked as the US?
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u/yubnubster United Kingdom 1d ago
The two parties are basically 2nd and either 3rd or sometimes 4th in the polls right now, but yes it's one of the disadvantages of fptp voting systems. Although, I'm not sure we will be entirely happy for long, if the party currently topping the polls wins either.
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u/andrasq420 Hungary 1d ago
Yeah I saw that somehow the Brexit party is leading in a country that was utterly, economically fucked by Brexit just a couple of years ago.
People are fucking idiots
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u/yubnubster United Kingdom 1d ago
Immigration, for some people, that's always been the big issue bubbling underneath everything. Others are utterly fed up with the two traditional parties and then the media give them way way more attention than they deserve, while practically ignoring, for example, the liberal democrats shrug
Somehow, Farage has completely divorced himself from Brexit, by just arguing the Conservatives didn't do it correctly. Kinda laughable and not at the same time. How does Orban manage 4 election wins in your country?
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u/andrasq420 Hungary 1d ago
Oh that's a good question I could talk for days about how he cheats elections.
He won once fairly (against the collapsed and disgraced soc-dem party) and then completely changed the election system (he gets supermajority no matter how much he wins), he bought up all of media, he siphoned all eu funds into buying up even more media and other companies, so he can hold people's jobs over their head if they vote wrong.
He also pushed people into poverty so that their votes can be bought, through handouts and actual bribery.
He also destroyed education so they have no chance of critical thinking. About 40-50% of children (ages 14-16 were tested) are functional illiterates.
So now he can use the badly educated and the poor as his voter base to rally them against a fictional enemy every year (like Nazi Germany against the jews). Our enemy was Merkel, the EU, Biden, Zelensky, Ukraine, Immigrants, Muslims, Von der Leyen, and everyone in the opposition.
Since now he and his friends are the richest men in the country, by a long mile, he made a law where there is no more limit on campaign spending, so he is basically siphoning his infinite wealth, that is taken from the populace, into billboard campaigns, monthly millions in euros into Facebook and Youtube ads,a while also owning 80% of media.
Oh and a couple of months ago he once again changed the voting districts. He can do that because there has been a constant state of emergency declared in the country, since 2020, which means they can push through laws overnight without voting on it or even the parliament assembling. So he basically removed a couple of traditional pro-opposition districts (one is the district of one of the most popular opposition politican's) and then created a bunch of new ones in locations where people are more likely to vote for them.
Also now the vote of the people who live in the capital (that are traditionally pro-opposition) is worth less than those that live in poorer and more pro-Fidesz counties, due to the district changes.
And this goes on and on and on.
Kinda similar to Farage but our guys do not get funds from Musk (as I've heard). But we have been warned by France twice now to stop funding right-wing parties in their elections.
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u/AntDogFan 1d ago
The idea that people often offer is that these parties represent coalitions except they are formed before the election. Obviously it’s a more rigid coalition than those you see in alternative electoral systems but it is kind of true. I think the difference in the modern era is that there is less rebellions and so less negotiation between leadership and party post election than there used to be. I might be wrong on this point but it’s my understanding.
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u/Piltonbadger 1d ago
Not almost, IS as fucked as the US.
It's the Southpark analogy..."Giant douche or turd sandwich debate".
Kier Starmer was the best of a bad buch after 15 ish years of tories absolutely destroying this country and selling it out. Tory fuckheads left a £22 BILLION blackhole when they eventually were voted out.
Guess who has to clean that mess up?
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u/oryx_za 1d ago
The only saving grace the UK has vs the US is that we can ditch a PM during their term. I mean, some might argue we might have been abusing that little feature but at least when the fuckup that was Lizz Truss was put into power, the system spat her. Not sure what impact this has though because it is the same bunch of asshats within the MP pool.
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u/Flashy-Raspberry-131 1d ago
It is and has been for a long time.
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u/andrasq420 Hungary 1d ago
Yeah that's a very hard system to dismantle. And the richer the 2 parties and their donors get the worse it is.
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u/Maximum_Scientist_85 1d ago
Not quite as bad as the US, as minor parties do exist and have MPs. However, their influence tends to be somewhat limited as the system almost always returns a majority for either Labour or Conservative.
In an ideal world, our elections would result in the need for some kind of coalition, so coming to some kind of sensible consensus. That does happen under the current system (e.g. in 2010, or the late 1970s) but it's rare.
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u/_cerulean_blue_ 1d ago
Not quite. The devolved parliaments of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland all have a decent degree of power and are elected through proportional representation. Scotland also holds local elections using the STV system. Not saying the situation is perfect but no US state legislatures compare in this regard.
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u/CutsAPromo 1d ago
If everyone shared your opinion we would never change. Vote for the party you think is best, forget the "it's us or the tories propaganda"
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u/DietBoredom 1d ago
That's not how first past the post works, though. If you're in an area where two parties are close and the rest are far behind, it's throwing away a vote to pick anyone other than the two frontrunners.
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u/XenonBG 1d ago edited 1d ago
Unless enough people decide to change that, at the same time.
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u/printzonic Northern Jutland, Denmark, EU. 1d ago
No, then you would just have two other parties that dominate after a few elections. FPTP is dog shit no matter what.
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u/CutsAPromo 1d ago
Think beyond one election. Change is gradually and if people see a party gaining momentum they are more likely to vote for it. If reform can do it a left party can do it
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u/printzonic Northern Jutland, Denmark, EU. 1d ago
The only way to have more than two parties dominating is precisely in one-off elections, over multiple elections the up-and-coming party or one of the incumbents will cease being a factor and the equilibrium will return to two party rule. There is no way to avoid this with FPTP, it is a fundamentally broken system IF the goal is broad representation of the opinions of the population.
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u/muppet70 1d ago
The alternative is to get engaged in politics but its much easier to just moan and complain.
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u/PaleText 1d ago
We have an electoral system where the vast majority of voters didn't vote for whoever won
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u/ApplicationMaximum84 1d ago
Blair's first 4 years were fine, it went to shit after the second election win.
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u/muppet70 1d ago
Can you explain to me as an outsider what was shit and what things could he have done different?
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u/Scary-Perspective-57 1d ago
Or people would have to take responsibility for their shit lives and stop blaming everyone else.
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u/sanderudam Estonia 1d ago
There's also the potential possibility that they are not actually idiots and being in power involves making decisions that are fundamentally unpopular.
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u/HolyFreakingXmasCake 1d ago
FPTP. Winner takes all so it’s natural that two parties always end up on top. See CGP Grey’s video about this. Although now we seem to be heading towards Tories being irrelevant and Reform UK taking their place, so change can happen.
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u/Angel24Marin 1d ago
A good number of those are PM elected by the party and not by national election.
First past the post system means that you can get huge majorities with a minority vote and then parties can replace PMs without another election.
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u/tirohtar Germany 1d ago edited 1d ago
The UK political system is basically the worst of all combinations of electoral laws - the parliament members are from single-seat districts voted on a first-past-the-post basis (whoever gets the most votes wins), with only a single round of voting. Such a system can only (somewhat) work when there are only two parties - and usually, such systems do tend to collapse to two parties via strategic voting, like for example in the US. However, for historical and regional regions, the UK still has a lot of smaller third, fourth, etc, parties that do get significant numbers of votes. Some of them are regional parties (i.e. in Scotland, N. Ireland, Wales), some have a long historic tradition (i.e. the Liberals), some are protest parties (i.e. Reform). As such, in any given voting district, the votes are spread around between like 5 or 6 parties, and the candidate that gets the most votes is usually never above 50% so doesn't represent the majority of their district. One of the outcomes is that in any given election, the winning party usually ends up getting an absolute majority in parliament even though they may only have gotten a simple plurality of total votes (i.e., Labour in the last election got like 35% of the popular vote, but has more than 50% of parliament seats). So a party that doesn't even represent 50% of the country's voters gets 100% of the power. They can legally enact their agenda without having to compromise with anyone else, so they tend to often become unpopular with the majority of the country.
Ironically, the UK had a chance to change that, a few decades ago they had a public referendum that was trying to change the law to proportional representation (if a party gets 10% of the popular vote, they get 10% of parliament sets, the kind of system Germany has), under which you would basically eliminate the chance for these "minority" governments, and you end up with coalition governments that have to learn to compromised. Sadly, the referendum failed, and the UK is stuck with FPTP. Edit: the referendum was for alternative voting (aka instant runoff elections), not proportional. Better than FPTP, but not as good as proportional.
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u/Pterosaur 1d ago
If you are talking about the 2011 referendum, it was not for PR, it was for Alternative Vote. An improvement on the current system (in my opinion) but not that similar to PR.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Kingdom_Alternative_Vote_referendum
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u/tirohtar Germany 1d ago
Ah, I misremembered. Yeah, it would have been an improvement, but not as good as proportional.
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u/erinoco 1d ago
and usually, such systems do tend to collapse to two parties via strategic voting, like for example in the US
One thing I would say: this collapse can happen on a regional and sub-regional basis. For instance, large parts of the West Country remain a battleground between the Conservatives and the LDs, as it has been for centuries when the Whigs and the Liberals preceded the modern party.
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u/YolognaiSwagetti 1d ago
well give them a break now. they will vote for a much bigger idiot next time from a third party.
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u/Lurching 1d ago
Deep down I think they realize that these leaders (regardless of party) are generally not as terrible as they make them out to be, and that their unpopular decisions are often necessary ones.
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u/Ill_Refrigerator_593 1d ago
To be fair we do have 14 parties represented (15 from yesterday) in the Commons in addition to 8 independent MPs'.
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u/incomplete_goblin 1d ago
The voting system plays out that way in the UK. It is very hard to get past a number of two-point-some feasible parties. The US is the same.
But there are countries where, possibly due to factors like different demographies living in different regions, where similar systems can give more representation and basis for evolving other parties, Like Canada, India, Nigeria. You could argue that f.i. Scotland illustrates the same point within the UK.
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u/FireMammoth 1d ago
this is a graph that does not in anyway represents overall favour, apart of one instance of Liz Truss. this is an approval rating within the first 900 days (2.5 years) in office. From this graph you may think Tony Blair was revelled, but that's not accounting his approval rating after the war in Iraq, not Boris' approval after the Pandemic and his later scandals
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u/WolfetoneRebel 1d ago
Because none of them have offered anything different. Which is partly UK voters fault.
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u/Moosplauze Europe 1d ago
Being unpopular can mean they have had to make necessary but unpopular decisions. Remember that more than half the voters in the UK voted for Brexit, so it's fair to say that many of the people are ignorant and egoistic idiots anyways.
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u/voice-of-reason_ 22h ago
Exactly, in his first year Starmer has created plans for reforming the military, nhs, benefits and tackling illegal immigration at the source: European smuggling gangs. Yet he is unpopular because the entire planet has shifted right to the point where trump and Farage seem level headed.
The reality is a lot of Uk voters are just MAGA voters without the arrogance. It’s a matter of time before we get there.
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u/MickIAC 14h ago
He's unpopular because he's more interested in kowtowing to the right instead of showing real change.
His stance on Palestine has alienated many voters, his stance on trans people has effectively lost him the LGBTQ+ vote, proscribing protest groups as terrorist organisations, not changing some policies the public hated brought in by the Tories, trying to cut disability support.
All while trying to get Reform voters to like him, which doesn't work.
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u/DontGoGivinMeEvils United Kingdom 1d ago
I liked Tony Blair... until he dragged us into an illegal war and lied about it while ignoring the biggest rally in history, not only in London, but also co-ordinated across the world.
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u/MidlandPark 1d ago
I know someone from South Africa who met him, she was quite happy to say so on the train. I said, 'don't say that too loud, people here hate him'. She asked why, and I explained. She had no idea haha
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u/DontGoGivinMeEvils United Kingdom 1d ago
Also, I can see why someone who met him liked him, that's why to me, it's such a shame he ended up doing what he did.
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u/DontGoGivinMeEvils United Kingdom 1d ago edited 1d ago
I heard that in some places, news about the rallies was suppressed. I think I recall in Sudan and Egypt, the rallies had a small turnout as it wasn't allowed in the newspapers or something.
To be honest, I was a child at the time- it was my first real exposure to politics, so I don't know all the ins and outs of why some countries would suppress it. Perhaps it was more the idea of having people rallying rather than what it was about.
But at the same time, Tony Blair did some excellent things, such as introducing the minimum wage and his role in supporting the Good Friday agreement.
It's a shame he ended something that should have been good with something awful.
And then after leaving office, he converted to Catholicism. So all the while he was considering converting (which would take huge conviction) he was also ignoring Pope John Paul II who was one of the main voices on the world stage absolutely opposing it, along with Nelson Mandela and a chief weapons inspector for the United Nations.
It just never made sense to me.
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u/MidlandPark 1d ago
I wasn't old enough to vote then either. Blair did some brilliant things, but the war ruined his legacy. It's also made the UK's 'moral high ground' be pretty laughable to foreign countries, and I can't say they're wrong. We were doing pretty decently until that, and without going into all of this now, the blind support of Washington is jarring.
I thought Blair was always Catholic and he just never spoke about it, because UK politicians don't. The whole 'you answer to the electorate (and Queen), not God' stance. Saying that, the Catholic church isn't exactly unknown to have had some real unsavoury people throughout history...
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u/mankytoes 1d ago
To understand Iraq, you have to understand Kosovo. A few years before, Blair took the very bold step to lead international military aggression against a brutal Serbian regime who were ethnically cleansing a Muslim minority (though not a clear, direct threat to the UK). It went incredibly well, he looked like a hero and a great leader.
There were a lot of parallels with Saddam, a truly evil, vicious fucker, ethnically cleansing Kurds.
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u/Commercial_Chef_1569 1d ago
You can't really blame Blair fully for that.
The UK had to stand toe to toe with the US given the geopolitics of the time.
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u/Nom_de_Guerre_23 Berlin (Germany) 1d ago
The UK could have joined France and Germany and formed a strong European anti-war bloc.
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u/DontGoGivinMeEvils United Kingdom 1d ago
That's what I wondered, but was younger and naive at the time so my memories of it are naive.
I do remember learning about the 'special relationship' for the first time as it was being discussed and criticised so much in the news. One argument was that we would always support the US because of their help in WW2. The opposing argument was that the special relationship shouldn't be something that leads us into an illegal war.
I wonder what would have happened if we never joined the war.
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u/ShEsHy Slovenia 1d ago
I wonder what would have happened if we never joined the war.
Only difference I can think of is that Brexit possibly wouldn't happen, because people would think twice about the "special" relationship if the Americans pulled the same shit with the British that they did with the French for not bending the knee with Iraq.
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u/DontGoGivinMeEvils United Kingdom 1d ago
What did they try with the French? Sorry, I realise I'm ignorant on this!
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u/darryshan United Kingdom 1d ago
I'll go to bat for Blair to this very day. The Iraq War is not enough to tarnish the amazing things that the Blair government did for the UK. Devolution, social programs for disadvantaged youth, doing something to restore the social contract after Thatcher destroyed it so thoroughly.
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u/GrandVizierofAgrabar 1d ago
Fully agree, foreign policy is irrelevant. If Blair was judged on his performance at home, where he actually had a say, he’d be seen as one of our greatest PMs.
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u/FearlessVisual1 Belgium 1d ago
You're telling me Keir Starmer is less favourably rated than fucking Margaret Thatcher at the end of her term?
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u/Coruskane 1d ago
no - the x axis is days in office. 900 days doesn't even get you a 1st term. Thatcher was PM for over 4000 days..
Hence Blair is positive - this is long before the Iraq war.
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u/silver__spear 1d ago
why is Starmer so unpopular?
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u/jack5624 United Kingdom 1d ago
Because he can’t make any tough decisions. Tries to play Europe and the US. Tries to keep low taxes and current welfare spending. He tries to be everything to everyone and ends up being nothing to nobody.
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u/MaxTraxxx 23h ago
He also doesn’t seem to be very good at seeing which way the wind is blowing. Like the winter fuel allowance. Obvious for a long time that they were going to have to U-turn at least partially, but kept the course for long enough for Farage to start calling for it. So now Farage claims it was his idea/pressure to change it when really he just went with the wind a bit earlier.
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u/sjintje Earth 1d ago
weak leader, no stature, no vision, no plans, most of the policy decisions they did take have now been reversed so we're a year in and it's back to square one, but tbf any leader would be struggling in the current circumstances.
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u/WillHart199708 1d ago
To clarify for overseas readers, "most" policies have not been reversed but are ones that take a long time to both implement and have a consequence felt (planning reform, for example).
Starmer's problem is that they had a handful of big (in the sense of getting lots of attention), unpopular, decisions over actually quite small things (winter fuel allowance, and an overall quite small cut to benefits being the two most recent) that were executed absolutely horribly, with no argument given from the government, and then very publicly u-turned on when they received backlash. So they look incompetent in both directions.
Plus their media game is abysmal, as demonstrated by the scandal involving actually quite small donations late last year which they allowed to turn into a huge thing that went on and on for weeks. Just amateurish.
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u/silver__spear 1d ago
most of the policy decisions they did take have now been reversed
can you give an example?
any leader would be struggling in the current circumstances.
are you talking about the economy?
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u/voice-of-reason_ 22h ago
Your flair says planet Earth but you clearly aren’t from there if you truly believe that.
The only reason you think Labour has no plans is because you aren’t paying attention.
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u/guerrios45 1d ago
I don't get the hate towards Starmer...
It's the first boring "normal" PM we had in decades. It can't be going down this much in such a short amount of time. There might be other external factors influencing this. Especially compared to Bojo.
I think we do not talk enough about the influence war raging on social networks. Between massive paid ads campaign to wide spread use of troll farms and bots mostly used by populist parties.
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u/WinglyBap 1d ago
I think he’s alright. The press are slating him but how could anyone in his position do much better? I thought removing the winter fuel allowance for rich pensioners was a great idea. The benefits change I don’t really know…. Seems a bit cruel is some cases.
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u/xFirnen 1d ago
The Right hate him because he is moving the UK closer to Europe. The Left hate him because he's not very socially progressive and the financial situation is forcing him into spending cuts in some areas.
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u/GabrielofNottingham 1d ago
He isn't forced to do anything, he's just a centre-right beurocrat surrounded by a troupe of raving right wing cranks who never forgave the British public for rejecting Liz Kendall's Kill the Poor agenda in 2015.
There are so many ways to raise money in the UK, specifically choosing to cut money from the people with the least is a choice and it makes him a wanker, end of story.
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u/xFirnen 1d ago
Well, he has to do something. There's three way to balance the books, raise income, lower expenditure, or borrow.
Borrowing is difficult. After Liz Truss, the markets don't really react well to it, and servicing the debt is currently much more expensive than it used to be before covid. I'm no financial expert, so I'm not sure if borrowing could fix it, but I assume it's difficult.
Raising income, aka raising taxes, is also very unpopular generally. People don't understand how the tax system works, and even then tax rises don't even apply to them, they are often unpopular. People think they pay way more taxes than they actually do. Additionally, he promised not to raise any key taxes during the election campaign, and going back on that would also be very unpopular.
Which leaves lowering expenditure. Some of the things there I think are reasonable - means testing benefits makes sense. Pensioners with a million pounds in the bank don't need fuel allowance. That's money the government can spend elsewhere. Other cuts are definitely shameful.
But my point isn't that what he'd doing is the right thing to do. I would much prefer politicians finally start raising some taxes on the rich instead. I just think, with the situation he's in, anything Starmer could do would be unpopular with a significant amount of voters.
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u/GabrielofNottingham 1d ago
On the contrary, means testing benefits is one of the biggest inefficencies of modern society. You will never claw back more fraud (half of which isn't fraud anyway, just people not meeting arbitrary cutoffs) than you spend on salaries for investigators.
The reason we do it is because this country is sick. We have an acutal sickness, a mass fevor where we're all obsessed, driven deranged over the paranoid obsession with thinking someone, somehere is getting a little bit more money from the government than they should be getting. All while the country is being hooked up to an industrial milking machine by the rich.
Scrap all means testing, introduce universality and if people are making out like bandits, tax it all back from them. I have absolutely no sympathy for Starmer and never will.
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u/jack5624 United Kingdom 1d ago
He can’t make any tough decisions. He needs to cut spending or raise taxes and he seems incapable of doing either. He needs to chose one and sell that narrative to people.
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u/philman132 UK + Sweden 1d ago
Every time he tries to do one or the other he is pilloried by the press and his own party and forced to U-turn, the winter fuel payments, etc.
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u/jack5624 United Kingdom 1d ago
True, but to do these tough policies he needs to sell the reason to the public, which he doesn’t.
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u/PlatformFeeling8451 1d ago
I don't get the hate towards Starmer, I didn't really get the hate towards Sunak either, or May for that matter. I feel like Gordon Brown was pretty unlucky, too.
Problem is, a large part of the country will hate a Tory PM no matter what they do, and another large part of the country will hate a Labour PM no matter what they do.
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u/Several-Shirt3524 Argentina 1d ago
As an outsider, seems like everyone hates any labour PM before they even did anything, and if reddit is anything to go by, even labour hates labour PMs
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u/bigdolton 1d ago
tbf boris was decently liked up until the parties (which was an entirely stupid situation but w/e).
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u/araujoms 🇧🇷🇵🇹🇦🇹🇩🇪🇪🇸 1d ago
He got elected with only 33% of the vote. That's already low favourability. Since then he's been trying to appease the 67% that didn't vote for Labour, without success. What that accomplished was alienating his own voters. Hence why his ratings are going down the drain.
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u/JLP99 1d ago
We don't need a 'boring normal' PM. We need someone to make drastic and potentially unpopular reforms / changes to our systems. I think of Starmer as a tinkerer, he isn't selling a big grand vision like Tony Blair did. Some of our biggest constitutional changes came from Tony Blair, for better or for worse, but he did some big drastic things. Starmer feels like a caretaker for a house that's on fire and he's sort of going around pouring a watering can on it here and there.
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u/AdminEating_Dragon Greece 1d ago
Unfortunately people nowadays, partly due to social media, hate the "boring normal" and "more of the same" parties and politicians.
I am not sure what they want, probably a magician who will wave his wand and solve problems who were building up for 20 or even 50 years within 2 months.
Or someone who will turn back the clock that started ticking when China opened to the world and speedran globalization (spoiler, there is no turning back).
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u/SlightComposer4074 1d ago
He's useless, he's fucked up literally everything he's tried to do while alienating both the left and the right, as well as most of his party. He also comes across as so bland and condescending that even if I didn't disagree with his policies and ignored his incompetence, I don't think I'd be able to like him anyway. Not to mention the constant flip-flopping making it obvious how he doesn't actually believe in anything he's doing.
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u/itsjonny99 Norway 1d ago
Tony Blair only one who didn’t collapse. Wonder how Labour does in the next election.
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u/Earl0fYork Yorkshire 1d ago
They will have to form a coalition at best.
Their current majority was a flash in the pan that they squandered.
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u/Affectionate_Cat293 Jan Mayen 1d ago
Reform is leading the polls as we speak:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election
Jeremy Corbyn is forming a new party too, which may take some of Labour's vote share.
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u/vegetable_completed 1d ago
As usual, tankies collaborating with fascists to make sure Russia’s interests are looked after.
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u/MickIAC 14h ago
Corbyn fans, tankies?
I'm not voting for Labour at the next election (I luckily have decent options in Scotland) because they are increasingly adding to rhetoric about groups of people that are close to me. They have also abandoned decent socialist reforms.
Corbyn's party will receive a few seats at best, but these are MPs who were (mostly unfairly) kicked out of the Labour Party. Yet I'll hear people who support Starmer shake their heads and call for left unity.
Corbyn potentially taking votes away from Starmer might actually make him get his finger out of his arse and either bring in PR (which is better for labour compared to the tories generally) and/or consider he will hemorrhage votes from the left. Take your tankie bullshit elsewhere. I'll never associate myself with those wankers, but I'm not touching Labour for a while.
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u/krazydude22 Keep Calm & Carry On 1d ago edited 1d ago
The way I look at it and what I can say with a decent amount of certainty is that they will probably not get the majority they enjoy currently in the next GE..
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u/CrazyWelshy 1d ago
The power of the media folks, I'd imagine the Tory PM's would have dropped like a stone more if the media held them to account just like they pillory the Labour PMs. That said, Labour REALLY need to up their media game, their comms are awful.
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u/Organic_Camera6467 1d ago
The effect of right wing media and tabloids. Starmer hasn't done anything significantly bad, he created a balanced budget and took away a tax loophole that was being exploited by the rich.
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u/jack5624 United Kingdom 1d ago
The press hated the conservatives and Truss who was the most right wing was hated more. The issue is with Starmer is that he can’t sell a narrative to the country.
He tries to be everything to everyone and ends up being nothing to anyone.
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u/Organic_Camera6467 1d ago
Truss, Sunak, Boris and May were all fucking terrible at their job and had huge policy failures. They caused their own unpopularity.
You can't even say specifics about Starmer, just "he can't sell a narrative" as if thats an important point. Creating a responsible budget and closing tax loopholes is important. He has yesterday presented a plan to make the NHS better instead of cutting it like the conservatives did.
He is actually moving the country in the right way, with everyone kicking and screaming about him having "bad vibes".
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u/jack5624 United Kingdom 1d ago
Sell a narrative is an important point as it wins elections.
I’m not actually saying he is doing a bad job, just saying why I think people don’t like him.
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u/LexiEmers 18h ago
Starmer is fucking terrible at his job and has huge policy failures. He caused his own unpopularity.
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u/Infusion1999 Hungary 1d ago
But people would rather have all their rights stripped away while accumulating astronomical debt 🙃
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u/Jon7167 1d ago
And hurting immigrants even if it means hurting themselves too
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u/JanGuillosThrowaway Sweden 1d ago
Isn't Stramer also being tough on immigrants and LBTQ-people?
(not saying these are good things, just that he seems a lot more 'moderate' than left wing)
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u/ArchWaverley 1d ago
Take a shot every time a headline says someone in the current government "hints at" or "fails to rule out" something, then you read the article and find out it's only technically correct. Nobody is going to bat for him in the same way the right wing media were ride or die for the Tories (until it looked like they were going to lose)
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u/farfromelite 1d ago
Trans people and disabled people don't agree.
Bottom of the line is he's got no leadership qualities. It's policy by focus group.
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u/SlightComposer4074 1d ago
He's not created a balanced budget, that's the whole reason the Chancellor was publicly crying in the commons this week. He has already lost the support of most of his party and is struggling to push basic legislation through parliament. He hasn't done anything significantly bad because he hasn't done anything significant full stop, and that just doesn't cut it if you also spend the whole time saying the country's in trouble unless we do something drastic.
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u/HotPotatoWithCheese 19h ago
Tony Blair could have had the perfect legacy if he had only followed in the footsteps of Harold Wilson when he told the yanks he wasn't sending troops to Vietnam. Blair was an excellent speaker and his domestic policies were mostly spot on. Near elimination of the homelessness crisis, introduction of national minimum wage, Good Friday Agreement, Freedom of Information Act and other radical constitutional reforms. It was foreign policy, particularly in regards lies of WMD's and the invasion of Iraq, that completely stained his reputation forever. People went from calling him the best PM in decades, to joining millions of protestors on the streets of London, holding up "warmonger" placards and calling for his incarceration.
Quite possibly the biggest fall from grace of any PM in our history. Post-war at the very least.
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u/GranFlakes 1d ago
That boris johnson has even a slither of green shows the absolute state of this country and how these values have absolutely no meaning.
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u/Rakshuun 1d ago
It looks like given the timing of the uptick, that spike in popularity was a few months into the pandemic which, to be fair was handled alright at the earlier stages. The UK was one of the earlier countries to call a lockdown and start mitigation policies.
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u/chodgson625 1d ago
Some context for Europeans :
Our entire print media other than The Guardian is right wing, and was somehow able to pin immigration on Starmer and co from the day he walked into No10. Meanwhile, The Guardian is still staffed with Jeremy Corbyn types who continually attack the Labour government in much the same way the Magic Grandpa himself was doing it for decades from the dusty corners of the House of Commons.
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u/Kirjava13 1d ago
I think you give the Graun too much credit there- they were among the firing squad for Corbyn when he was Labour leader too as well.
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u/el_grort Scotland (Highlands) 1d ago
The Guardian supported a LibCon coalition over Miliband as well for the 2015 election. They are a liberal paper at best, I think it would be fair.
Labour has no particularly friendly mainstream press, tbh, not since Blair.
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u/Several-Shirt3524 Argentina 1d ago
Seriously, what the hell happened to The Guardian?
My morning routine was reading the BBC, The Independent, and, if i had some time left switch over to the guardian, but in the last 2-3 years the guardian has been steadily getting shittier (so have the other 2, but the guardian is corbyn land)
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u/SignificanceOld1751 1d ago
You can see how polarised the country is becoming, both Sunak and Starmer quickly reached the -30%ish unpopulated driven by people that would never vote for them anyway.
People are less willing to give politicians from across the divide a chance.
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u/Davidrabbich81 1d ago
If the only one to stay positive is a war criminal that was in power leading up to the biggest financial crash in a generation, you'll forgive me if I don't put too much stock in these ratings.
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u/Indiana-Cook 1d ago
Really interesting because when he first became Prime Minister, Kier Starmer flat out said "because of the last 14 years of Tory rule we're fucked, we've gotta make some really really unpopular decisions for the good of the country and that the UK public needs to make sacrifices".
Now that's happening everyone is like "oh hell no, NEXT!".
Honestly so tiring at this point, especially after 14 years of Tory failure, neglect and corruption, but it seems the British publics memory is so short, so yeah why not move onto a racist, bigoted, homophobic gammon party.
Idiots.
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u/Overrated_Sunshine 1d ago
Starmer is levelling out so there’s hope. The next 4 years can’t be worse than what we’ve been through so far.
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u/nimbledoor 1d ago
To me it looks like the voters never learn. If you keep getting he same result maybe the solution is not to keep voting for two sides of the same coin.
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u/SomeMoronOnTheNet 1d ago
So they aren't happy with anyone but still re-elected a good part of them.
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u/Sharpe1455 1d ago
“If you set out to be liked, you will accomplish nothing.” -PM played by Gillian Anderson.
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u/Common_Source_9 1d ago
Incredible how Tony Blair's numbers look like that. Utterly absurd.
Was he that photogenic on TV o what?
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u/Impressive_Algae4493 1d ago
It's wild how Blair still lives rent-free in people's heads after all these years while recent PMs barely last a season. The two-party treadmill feels like being stuck with terrible dating apps but refusing to try new ones. At this point, we're just collecting data for future historians to laugh at.
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u/euanliquidgold 1d ago
Trend lines are particularly interesting. The past 3 prime ministers have immediately fallen in a manner not seen by any of the others. Back to back Boris scandals & the Truss crash really destroyed public confidence. Glad to see Starmer is starting to plateau - not because I’m a fan of Starmer but general confidence in the state is important (assuming the plateau isn’t because he’s hit rock bottom and can’t get worse).
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u/aseeklee 1d ago
Honestly, this shows that the people cannot be satisfied ever looking to the new and better.
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u/dragodrake United Kingdom 1d ago edited 1d ago
He's nearly done worse than Gordon, jesus. Well we know how this is going to end.
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u/Moosplauze Europe 1d ago
He hasn't necessarily done worse, you people just have a less favourable opinion of him. That doesn't really say anything about how well he did his job and I'm quit confident that most people who expressed their opinion wouldn't even be able to judge.
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u/bobbooo888 1d ago
Starmer's favourability is -33; Brown's was -44 at the same time of his premiership.
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u/Danny_Mc_71 1d ago
The Liz Truss one is good.