Six months after Labour’s biggest landslide in a generation, the new government is already in the mire. The poll lead on which Starmer’s majority was built has already all but vanished, leaving Labour in a three-way dogfight with the Conservatives and Nigel Farage’s resurgent Reform UK, while, further down, both the Greens and Liberal Democrats have also made gains.
Voters have historically given new governments the benefit of the doubt, with most holding their ground or gaining support in their first six months. Blair’s first two new Labour governments enjoyed polling honeymoons. Starmer has had no such luck. Labour’s seven-point decline since the election has been exceeded only once in the past four decades – by the Conservatives’ eight-point fall in the wake of “Black Wednesday” in 1992. Starmer’s early approval ratings are also worse than any PM at this stage except Major after the ERM (Exchange Rate Mechanism) crisis. Major never recovered the ground lost early, and went on to a landslide defeat.
