DAN HODGES: Starmer is facing oblivion. This is the secret to recovery - but he's too blind to see it…
The numbers don’t lie. Keir Starmer’s political fate is now sealed. On Tuesday, pollster YouGov published its latest government approval figures. Starmer’s had collapsed to a net rating of minus 56, matching the final level of Rishi Sunak’s doomed administration. In addition, Sir Keir had a personal approval rating of minus 44.
Yes, it’s only one poll. But it tells a story that is supported by a plethora of other data.
A second pollster, Ipsos Mori, has been publishing approval surveys for half a century. And the figures are unequivocal.
In December 1981, Margaret Thatcher’s net approval stood at a subterranean minus 41. Then Argentina invaded the Falklands, and it rebounded to plus 23. At the time of the 1982 election it had slipped back again, but was still in positive territory at plus 9.
During her second term, Thatcher’s popularity waxed and waned. At its lowest point, in August 1986, it had dropped as low as minus 36. But by June 1987, when Britain again went to the polls, she had recovered to plus 1.
John Major’s lowest rating was plus 4, after which he comfortably won the 1992 ‘Khaki Election’, following Thatcher’s defenestration and the successful expulsion of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.
Tony Blair momentarily plunged to minus 31 during the September 2000 fuel protests, and minus 35 following the invasion of Iraq.
But he rallied to win the 2001 and 2005 elections. David Cameron slumped to minus 30 before recovering to overcome Red Ed Miliband.
And Boris began his premiership in negative territory, and had fallen to minus 20 by December 2019. Yet he was still able to best Jeremy Corbyn at the polls.
But, according to Ipsos Mori’s most recent survey, Keir Starmer’s rating is a staggering minus 54. Of those questioned, 73 per cent say they are dissatisfied with his performance, while only 19 per cent express approval. No Prime Minister has ever recovered from the depths of such unpopularity to win a subsequent general election.
Yes, political fortunes are fickle and can be transformed. But that requires a number of factors. The first is a united party. And Keir Starmer’s is starting to fracture.
Just before the summer recess, his seemingly impregnable majority of 174 crumbled as his MPs rebelled over his welfare bill. The Cabinet have begun to openly defy him, ambushing him and forcing him into the panicked announcement that his government would recognise a Palestinian state.
His activist base is drifting away to Jeremy Corbyn, Zarah Sultana and their as yet unchristened party. And potential successors – Angela Rayner, Wes Streeting, Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper – are beginning to activate their leadership campaigns.
A second prerequisite for any potential recovery is a clear, focused political strategy. And Keir Starmer currently has the clarity of vision of a blindfolded miner who has just been robbed of his Davy lamp.
At the start of the week, it emerged that the Prime Minister was set to embark on a new campaign to ‘talk up Britain’. According to a briefing given to Huffington Post, ‘it’ll be about how the Government is a force for good backing Britain, dismissing this sense of Britain being broken which the other parties seem obsessed with.
That will be a big part of the run-up to conference. Reform and the Tories talk about Britain being broken and that’s just not what the PM thinks.’
Which would be fine, if the party most obsessed with claiming the country is broken wasn’t Keir Starmer’s own.
Last year it was Sir Keir himself who unveiled an analysis of the national finances by baldly stating: ‘The assessment will show that Britain is broke and broken – revealing the mess that populist politics has made of the economy and public services.’
Last week, Home Office minister Angela Eagle responded to the chaos created by a court ruling backing the closure of The Bell Hotel in Epping by insisting: ‘This Government inherited a broken asylum system – at the peak there were over 400 hotels open.’
The Government’s messaging is now in utter disarray, with Starmer and his ministers running around, issuing directly conflicting, and increasingly incoherent, statements. And that’s because their entire political strategy is underpinned by a series of glaring contradictions.
At times the Prime Minister seems to want to fall back on the tried and tested technique of blaming his predecessors for the mess he inherited.
Then he suddenly changes tack, and instead tries to pretend to the nation the mess has been successfully and neatly cleared away. All the while trying to rationalise why, if Britain really is no longer broken, things are getting so much worse.
And that is, perhaps, the key reason why Keir Starmer’s premiership is now doomed. To claw things back the Prime Minister’s luck needs to turn. And it is indeed about to turn. It’s going to get a whole lot worse.
The real political problems haven’t even begun for this Government. In a couple of months, Rachel Reeves is going to have to deliver her Budget. And at that moment she, Keir Starmer and the Labour Party will fall off a cliff. A taste of what’s on offer was provided last week by a raft of increasingly haphazard – not to say manic – briefings over how Reeves intends to fill the gargantuan hole in the public finances.
It began with a threat to introduce some sort of Mansion Tax. This morphed into a warning that any home valued more than £500,000 would be targeted. By Friday just about anyone who had ever clicked on RightMove was reportedly in the Chancellor’s sights.
This increasing desperation in government circles is because the truth is finally dawning on Keir Starmer and his ministers. They have nowhere left to hide.
Last December, Rachel Reeves announced to the CBI: ‘I do not plan to have another Budget like this. I have wiped the slate clean. Public services now need to live within their means because I’m really clear: I’m not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes.’
It was a lie. In the Budget she will announce more borrowing, more taxes and more public spending. And when she does, she and the Prime Minister will look back with fondness at the days when his approval rating languished at minus 54.
There is now nothing that can save Sir Keir. When Reeves officially breaks her tax promise, it’s game over. From that moment there is no statement, or policy or pledge that can be issued that will shift the public’s perception of their government and Prime Minister.
The Starmer administration is about to be locked on to the railway tracks. And the destination is electoral oblivion.
The numbers don’t lie. Keir Starmer has reached the point of no return.
