Incompetent, dishonest and unsuccessful. These are the three most common characteristics that have been attributed to Keir Starmer’s Labour government by the public, according to a devastating new opinion poll from YouGov published for The Times.
Incompetence perhaps best embodied by Labour’s conspicuous lack of plans to crack down on illegal migration, with a number of small boat crossings in 2024 up 25 per cent on the previous year.
Smashing the gangs more like smashing the country, in my view.
Dishonest. While the word best epitomised perhaps by the series of post-election revelations that have become known as doughnut gate or freebie gate, we saw Keir Starmer and many other Labour ministers taking lots of goodies from Lord Ali.
Matthew Goodwin shared his view on how the Labour Party are doing
GB News
Incompetent. While inheriting the fastest growth in the G7 and then leading Britain to zero growth in the third quarter of last year with an anticipated recession in 2025, is perhaps what inspired this characterization.
The government’s problems are arguably much deeper than falling short of these milestones that, incidentally, the public think they will ultimately fail to reach. Labour lacks a broader story about what it wants to do with the country.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
Keir Starmer has faced the biggest post-election fall in popularity in modern history. His leadership ratings are, to be frank, in the toilet, and a poll from the weekend had Labour losing its majority already, only being in power for a few months, with 67 of Labour seats going not to the Conservatives but to Nigel Farage and the Reform Party.
Cabinet ministers Ed Miliband, Yvette Cooper and Angela Rayner were all down to lose their seats to Nigel Farage’s Reform Party. The UK’s foremost pollster, Sir John Curtis has revealed that his own diagnosis for Reform is very good.
They are articulating that sense of discontent, lack of direction, lack of progress and lack of trust in politics. Keir Starmer doesn’t really do a story. He doesn’t do a narrative.
He’s a technocrat and he’s not really a politician. He believes that if Labour delivers, then voters will applaud them. So Labour’s only hope for the new year is to is to deliver on its promises.
Keir Starmer wants to ‘smash the gangs’ facilitating the large numbers of migrants crossing the ChannelGETTY
He thinks that this will be enough. But it appears to be miles off.
It betrayed the promise not to raise taxes on working people. The Labour government has failed to grow the economy, and its supposed plan to smash the gangs has, if anything, increased the number of migrants entering the country illegally.
Meanwhile, the Reform Party is much more than just an anti mass migration party. It voices a story of millions of socially Conservative voters out there in the country, away from the bright lights of London and asking themselves, what on earth is happening to the country they love so much.
The story of a lost Britain that existed before we entered the age of stagnation, of managed decline. The story that once binded citizens together.
Matthew Goodwin shared his view on the Reform Party
GB News
Where our national identity mattered, where our identity was protected and preserved before the ruling class in this country pushed the agenda of national self-flagellation onto the rest of us.
We’ve already seen from the last election the progress that Nigel Farage and Reform have been making, with barely any preparation. Only a dozen or so members of staff.
The party came second in nearly 100 seats at the last General Election, nearly 90 of which came in Labour areas and at local council by elections up and down the country.
Reform’s progress has often been coming at the expense of the Labour Party.
The local county council elections in the spring, I think, will be the next act in this political earthquake and may yet come to completely transform the political landscape.