Labour voters have issued a scathing assessment of Sir Keir Starmer’s first year in office during an appearance on the BBC. A group of Brits who voted for Labour at the 2024 general election were quizzed by pollster Luke Tryl of More in Common.
He asked them to sum up their appraisal of the Prime Minister if they were his employer. One said: “Disappointed. You’re fired”. Another added: “Try harder or you’re going to lose your job.” A third said: “I need to see some evidence from now going forward.”
The Government “pushed ahead too fast” and “didn’t listen enough” on welfare reform, a Cabinet minister has said.
Bridget Phillipson told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg that she is “not going to pretend that it hasn’t been a tough or a challenging week” after ministers were forced to scrap their plans in the face of a backbench revolt.
“I’d be the first to acknowledge that, both in the pace and the nature of what we set out, we didn’t get it right, but we do need to reform the system we’ve got,” she said.
Asked about the Prime Minister’s authority, the Education Secretary added: “What the Prime Minister has said, and what I also believe, is that what we set out, we pushed ahead too fast, we didn’t listen enough to people, including, I would say, including to lots of people who had concerns about the nature of that change.”
Labour has experienced a significant double-digit decline in public support since the general election a year ago, marking the first such drop for a governing party since John Major’s Conservative administration in the 1990s.
Sir Keir’s party has averaged 24% in opinion polls over the past month, a notable 10-point decrease from the 34% recorded in the weeks immediately following the 2024 election.
The last time a governing party saw its support fall by double digits was between 1992 and 1993, when Mr Major’s Tory government witnessed its poll numbers decline by 12 points, from an average of 43% in the aftermath of the April 1992 election to 31% a year later.