MOST voters already think Labour will lose the next General Election, according to a new poll.
Three in five voters, or 60%, believe Keir Starmer’s party will not manage a second term in power, despite sweeping to victory in a historic landslide less than three months ago.
The poll, by the More in Common think tank, also found that 52% believed Starmer would not be leading Labour into the next election, due in 2029.
The party has faced intense criticism in recent weeks over a growing row about ministers taking freebies from lobbyists and donors, especially Labour peer Waheed Alli.
Lord Alli has shelled out thousands to clothe Starmer, Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, who last week were forced to announce they would no longer take clothing gifts from the super-wealthy peer.
He even spent £5000 on clothes for Starmer’s wife, Victoria.
Rayner has been reported to the parliamentary standards watchdog over allegations she failed to properly declare a holiday in Lord Alli’s luxury Manhattan apartment last Hogmanay.
There is also a pay row at the heart of Government with special advisers reportedly furious about the bumper pay packet being collected by Starmer’s chief of staff Sue Gray (above), who is paid more than the PM and is said to have signed off on effective pay cuts for officials.
The More in Common poll found that one in five Labour voters now regretted backing the party and recorded a popularity rating of minus 20 for Starmer – consistent with other research which has found the Labour leader is becoming increasingly unpopular.
He has faced fierce criticism from his political opponents for the decision to deny the Winter Fuel Payment from around 10 million pensioners.
The Telegraph reported that the UK director of More in Common, Luke Tryl said that Labour could be ousted from power “even without losing a single vote” if they were unable to hit 36% of the popular vote come the next election.
They won just 33.7% of the popular vote on July 4 and the paper reported that even a modest Tory recovery would see Starmer turfed out of Downing Street.
Tryl said: “It may seem extremely premature to be looking ahead to the next election just months after the last one.
“But with such a volatile electorate, Labour needs to be thinking not just about how to hold on to its existing coalition but how to grow that broad but shallow base of support if it is going to have any chance of holding on to power.”
Speaking at a fringe event at Labour’s conference in Liverpool on Sunday, Professor John Curtice (above) of Strathclyde University said that Labour’s bleak message about the state of the country risked alienating the public.
He said: “A message that says ‘it’s all terrible, and it’s the other lot’s fault’ that isn’t accompanied by an attempt to construct a narrative about the future would potentially go down badly because that’s not what the public wants to hear.”
Curtice added that the Government had walked into mistakes and said senior figures seemed “to be very slow” at “spotting the bear traps”.
He said: “I think politicians have also made a major mistake about focusing on personal mistakes and foibles and all the rest of it. The truth is, what you sow you reap, and I think you must expect, given the way that you very heavily attacked the integrity of the last Conservative government, that the Conservative Party is going to return it in spades.”
