JOHN Curtice has said Keir Starmer’s “political antennae are weak” and he is “not very good at setting a narrative”.
The top pollster spoke on Times Radio about the Prime Minister’s diminishing popularity, with another poll from Opinium over the weekend showing his net approval ratings now stand at -30%, down almost 50 points since he took on the position.
In just 11 weeks after coming into power, Starmer is now viewed less favourably than both former prime minister Rishi Sunak and leader of Reform UK Nigel Farage.
Curtice suggested it wasn’t surprising Starmer was facing problems, adding “he wasn’t popular in the run-up to the election”.
He said Starmer is not very good at “spotting problems before they hit him”, as he criticised his decision to welcome former Conservative MP Natalie Elphicke into the parliamentary Labour Party earlier this year before she stood down at the election.
Curtice added that he “shares a weakness” with Sunak in not being good at setting a narrative.
Curtice said: “Keir Starmer is not a popular politician. He wasn’t popular in the run-up to the election. He got a bit of a boost having won the election, his ratings went up – surprise, surprise – but they’ve gone down pretty quickly.
“This is simply the re-emergence of a problem that was firstly clear.
“The second is that his political antennae are weak. He’s not very good at spotting problems before they hit him. We saw that when he admitted Natalie Elphicke to the parliamentary Labour party, the former Conservative MP for Dover and Deal.
“And immediately the question that was always going to be asked was ‘what about Diane Abbott?’ and it took them a long time to realise they needed to deal with Diane Abbott’s suspension.”
Abbott was readmitted as a Labour MP at the end of May after being suspended more than a year before when she said Jewish, Irish and Traveller people do not face racism "all their lives".
Curtice also said he thought the UK’s two-party system may have “effectively died a death” at the General Election, as he reflected on the need for the Conservatives to win back voters from Reform and Labour.
He said: “The big parties could no longer assume that the contest is simply between them.
“It’s perfectly obvious, in the case of the Conservative example, that while yes, they need to get back around the one in eight people who switched to Labour from them, they also need to get back the roughly one in four who switched to Reform.
“All parties now are going to have realise that 2024 may be the election in which the two-party system effectively died a death.”
The winner of the Conservative leadership contest to replace Sunak will be announced on November 2, with Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick, Tom Tugendhat and James Cleverly all vying for the position.
Curtice said the challenge facing the party is “very, very considerable”.
He added the lack of name recognition of the four remaining hopefuls may make it harder for the party to rebuild.
“The party is being asked to choose between four candidates and none of whom is particularly well known by the wider public, indeed not even particularly well known by the diminishing number of people who actually voted Conservative in July,” said Curtice.
