NIGEL Farage is more popular than Keir Starmer and other UK political party leaders, a poll has suggested.
According to an Ipsos poll carried out between November 8 and 11, the Reform UK leader had the highest favourability rating (28%) in a survey which included Starmer, LibDem leader Ed Davey, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, Chancellor Rachel Reeves and the Green Party co-leaders Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay.
Just 23% regarded Starmer favourably – down 3% from October – while more than half said they didn’t like him as a politician, leaving his net favourability at -29.
Reeves’s rating was even worse, standing at a measly 18%, with 50% regarding her as unfavourable, leaving her net favourability rating at -32.
Farage’s ability to split public opinion was, however, evident with a substantial 48% regarding him as an unfavourable leader, leaving his net favourability at -20 – worse than Davey and Badenoch, but much better than Starmer and Reeves.
Keiran Pedley, director of UK politics at Ipso, said what the statistics showed overall is that politicians are extremely unpopular overall at the moment with not a single UK leader anywhere near having a positive net favourability rating.
He said: “These numbers show that politicians are not a popular bunch in Britain right now, with more Britons holding unfavourable opinions than favourable for all of the ones on our list.
“Nigel Farage has the highest proportion favourable overall, but it remains to be seen whether he can convert that into increased support for Reform UK moving forward.”
The poll also showed only a quarter of people in the UK view US president-elect Donald Trump favourably while a significant majority (58%) do not like him, resulting in a net rating of -34.
A majority of Reform UK voters (59%) hold a favourable opinion of Trump.
Ipsos interviewed a representative sample of 1139 adults aged 18 and over across the UK.
