Keir Starmer is polling as the UK’s most unpopular prime minister on record. Where did it all go wrong?
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/30/uk/keir-starmer-labour-party-conference-intl
Posted by Relevant-Expert8740
Keir Starmer is polling as the UK’s most unpopular prime minister on record. Where did it all go wrong?
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/30/uk/keir-starmer-labour-party-conference-intl
Posted by Relevant-Expert8740
34 Comments
Not meeting expectations.
We all thought we were gonna get someone less cunty than tories, and then cuntiness ensued (winter fuel payments, migration, etc). Any good news got forgotten quick
He has all the charisma of Major, tone deaf advisors, a press that will attack him no matter what and an inability to talk about anything that matters to his voters base. Oh and he went after the boomers AND vulnerable. Bad form.
His inheritance tax and other taxes are all over the place and his trans bullying is pandering to the right.
Honestly sack Rachel Reeves, sick of her.
Regardless of party. Blindingly and painfully out of touch of reality, so out of touch his proposals appear deliberately self sabotaging, even for satire its unbelievable
The population has been systematically gaslit by the conservatives so much, especially from Brexit, so that they have to be told comforting lies instead of truths. Anyone now telling the truth does badly.
People were so fucked off with the conservatives it seemed Labour could do no wrong. A steady hand to redeem politics and be there for the people. Disappointment is a bitter pill and well… Labour. Could have done nothing and been more popular but well… Labour, not really a surprise.
The likes of Johnson, Cameron, Blair and Thatcher were more disliked and hated, but they had supporters as well. Starmer has no supporters.
Someone else in the comments said he went after the boomers? Did he? With the WFA yes and then pood his pants and u turned. Annoying the boomers and also the people who think pensions are bankrupting the country.
Reform fans will never switch to Starmer no matter how much he talks about how he loves flags and how hell stop the boats. Reform are a single issue party and Starmer can’t pivot conversations away from anything other than immigration. Labour have a credibility issue with immigration and even if people believed him Farage will just move to remigration and then deporting our own undesirable nationals then. You can’t out Farage Farage.
He’s abandoned the left of his own party entirely.
Personlality of a civil service middle manager.
Sleaze scandals despite saying they’re different than the Tories.
The OSA and Britcard are not vote winners. Not many people will now vote Labour because they’ve brought in these policies. They are vote losers though. Some apolitical folk who just want government to leave them alone will turn out and vote this shower of shit out.
People are angry after 50 years of neoliberalism
They want change not deckchair shuffling.
Nowadays people want a clown show not a sensible guy willing to get on with it and do the job.
If I was Starmer I would just go back to being a KC and let the people enjoy a muppet like Johnson or a grifter like Farage.
To be honest, maybe the voting public should start to look at themselves. Six PMs in the last ten years. Maybe the problem lies elsewhere, in terms of voter expectations: low taxes and a comprehensive welfare state that dishes out free this and free that.
Because he doesn’t stand for anything, his election strategy was based around neutralising Tory attacks by abandoning any position that got attacked even if it meant throwing people under the bus.
When he got into power, he’s still unwilling to take any sort of principled stand and has isolated Labours base by trying to win voters off reform, who were never going to vote for Labour anyway.
The British people don’t want boring, responsible and practical. They want someone who points the finger at others and tells them they what they want to hear.
He made all the right noises about being the government in waiting, and then brought us the Chagos deal and a string of new and higher taxes.
No faith from the electorate, and no comprehension that a Labour government couldn’t click its fingers and undo 10 years of the Tories running the country into the ground, twinned with no spine to present the situation in those terms to the country.
Plus he’s not very likeable.
I mean, I deeply dislike him but this is just silly. Have people forgotten Liz Truss?
Yeah the country is a mess. But it’d be nice if some of the people who *voted for the last 15 years of shite* did some self examination for once.
It’s seems really easy. The left hate everything he’s doing to appease the right and the right don’t believe a word he says.
The objective reason is that Labour’s achievements in the last year have been small wins when people thought there’d be big wins.
Coupled with an onslaught from a media addicted to the crash-bang-wallop soap opera of the last five years.
Plus the media’s rampant love affair with a five-man party of golf club racists.
I think he’s doing alright. 1000 times better than anything the tories put out over the past 14 years.
If you want to outrun the negative press that Labour usually gets them you have to actually make positive changes for the working class, stats like “we’ve increased productivity by 2.6%!” means nothing when families are struggling to make their weekly food shop
After May, Johnson and Truss – after Truss? The media has really done a number on this country.
“most unpopular prime minister on record”? Ha, hardly. What shite, pushed by someone.
Incompetent Tories, Farage the Toad, Brexit and the general stupidity of British people…
Labour got 33.7%. The turn out was 59.7% which was down by 8% from the previous election. That’s nearly 10mil votes. In comparison 2019 Boris got 14mil votes.
I don’t know what anyone expected, of course he’s going to be unpopular, especially when you factor in dissent being louder than praise.
Media and social media throwing anything to suit and people just lapping it all up.
Anyone who thinks Nigel “Remove all of your rights” Farage is our saviour needs their heads testing.
He’s not helped himself but has there ever been an occasion where a TV News channel has been more or less dedicated to bringing down a politician in the way GB news is?
The really mind boggling thing is that it’s part owned by the man predicted to succeed him.
In 5 years time it’s entirely possible that the PM owns the most popular news channel tasked with holding him to account.
This timeline is so fucked.
He was never likeable it’s just Tories where finished.
I wouldn’t mind paying a little more in tax if I was assured the damage from tory neglect was actually being repaired, but instead all I’m feeling is us slipping into authoritarian dystopia. Home Office strong arming Apple into handing over my pictures and messages? Online safety act forcing me to hand over my ID to some third party to have a wank? Totally accurate police facial recognition being rolled out nationwide? Fuck off
I don’t get what there is to hate with Starmer… antipathy, sure. Why the hate though? Seems weird
He inherited a terrible economy from the Tories and then Trump got into power, with all his disruptive and erratic threats and tariffs. He has had to negotiate a minefield featuring a rabidly nationalist right-wing USA, an EU that won’t/can’t do the UK any special favours, international money markets, war in Ukraine and a genocidal Israel etc. Yes there have been a few own-goals but most of the negativity is resentment about not having a sudden and miraculous improvment in daily life as a result of getting rid of the Tories. He is working hard to address the problems in public services but there are no quick fixes to long-term systemic problems. He also suffers from actually trying to maintain standards and sticking by codes of behaviour, rather than letting his MPs and ministers get away with misbehaviour. Add in relentlessly hostile media outlets that aggressively promote the interests of their super-wealthy owners and it’s hardly surprising he had a tough time.
I’m not in the country any more, but I know my Tory voting parents were literally blaming him for the state of the country 30 days after he was elected, ignoring everything that happened before, so it’s hard to take any criticism seriously given the extent of the hatchet job I clearly see being done. Other than charisma (which I frankly give zero fucks for) what is he doing wrong?
Well, the conference was disappointing for a start.
He seemed to be hyperfixating on Reform – a party with 4 MPs, which distracts us from what actually matters right now – government policy. I’m still slightly confused as to what this Labour government stands for. They say they’re going to reform immigration policy, but there’s nothing tangible, just empty promises we’ve all heard before, whilst the situation seems to be spiralling out his control.
I also found it interesting that when Starmer was talking about a ‘racist’ Britain, his speech became slightly percussive. It was almost a similar rhythmic style to Hitler, but I would never, of course, make any moral associations between the two because they clearly don’t exist, nor ever will.
Yet, it seems others from the Labour Party are incapable of extending the same courtesy to others. MPs being briefed from top-down to accuse people of supporting Nazism*, or even paedophilia**. This isn’t serious engagement with the problems Britain faces today, just cheap ‘dirty’ politics.
We’re also entering a new age of digital authoritarianism, ID cards, and the OSA are being pushed through – yet nobody voted for this.
This is why I believe Starmer is so deeply unpopular. If he genuinely wants public support, he needs to politically ‘grow up’ and start developing serious, tangible policy.
*https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn95q9j0yyro.amp
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/04/monday-briefing-why-opponents-of-the-online-safety-act-arent-on-jimmy-saviles-side**
People voted for change from the tories lack of empathy and asset-stripping greed. He decided to try and out do them, attacked the disabled and is treating ‘1984’ as a blueprint rather than the warning it was. He’s the definition of a grey characterless authoritarian.
Worse than Boris Johnson? Uk sure has its standards all over the place.
Edit: I read the article, who says this is John Kevin Curtice and Ipsos, not any sort of substantial poll. It’s a rubbish article.
Labour pushing through the OSA, betraying LGBT people, and pandering to Reform’s voter base, has given me an even more dim view of Kier than I thought possible.
It went wrong the day he failed to read his Bible and understand he is hailing the precursor to the Mark of the beast… None may buy or sell without a job, and without the digital id mark against your name, image and number – you won’t be allowed to work. Also, it’s mandatory, even if you cannot work.
That’s where it went wrong.
From that day onwards he focused on being the “class prefect” …
This is another career politician.
Notmyleader.