Maybe things can’t only get better for Keir Starmer, as he is shamed with the latest polling just as the Labour conference begins
Labour is supposed to help the people they have been actively working against, it’s no surprise he’s wildly unpopular.
Record breaker Starmer is the 'most unpopular PM since polling began'
Submitted 3 weeks ago by BrikoX@lemmy.zip to unitedkingdom@feddit.uk
https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2025/09/28/starmer-polling-ratings/
Comments
shadowedcross@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Have they, though?
- nationalising trains
- nationalising steel
- nationalising a part of our energy sector
- bringing the NHS back under direct public control
- expanding free childcare
- restarting SureStart (albeit under a different name)
- expanding free school meals
- expanding school breakfast clubs
- guaranteeing jobs for young people (announced this morning)
- big increases to the minimum wage, especially for the youngest
- expansion of workers rights
- expansion of renters rights
- big increase in infrastructure investment, particularly for renewables
ohulancutash@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
The trains were nationalised by the Tory government in 2020, and they also abolished franchising later that year. They also began to set up Great British Railways in 2021.
Steel has not been nationalised. The government has taken over the funding of redundancy payments and retraining for the shut down private sector Tata furnaces in Port Talbot, and has taken steps to force the owners of British Steel to keep the idle furnaces in Scunthorpe burning.
There has also been no nationalisation in the energy sector. Great British Energy is set up as a way to subsidise projects created and run by the private sector and other public bodies. It will not generate, distribute or retail energy.
Digit@lemmy.wtf 3 weeks ago
Here’s a drinking game if you want to stay sober:
Take a drink every time you see someone who’s working class, at a Labour Party conference.
They’ve long time lost their way.
G4Z@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
Angela Rayner, though of course she sold us out for a fucking flat in Brighton.
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Absolutely mental.
Kier is boring, has floated some things that the electorate doesn’t like (e.g. taking WFA away from the wealthy), and has done a very poor job highlighting the good that this government is doing, but is he fuck worse than Boris, Truss, or even Sunak.
People need to get some damn perspective.
eldebryn@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
His supposedly labour government has also doubled down on censoring wikipedia, calling people pedo-sympathizers for resisting absurd internet control laws that literally affect every digital facing international company, and is now promoting a digital ID straight out every digital era authoritatians or fascist’s wet dreams.
Is he better than sunak? Probably? Kinda? That’s a very low bar though and the fact that we even talk about it is sad. Their actions have been so much unlike what people think about when voting labour parties that it’s surreal.
People reasonably feel cheated on given the party’s supposed focus.
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
There’s also been:
- nationalising trains
- nationalising steel
- nationalising a part of our energy sector
- bringing the NHS back under direct public control
- ending various tax-dodging loopholes, such as the IHT for farmers
- windfall tax on energy companies
- charging VAT on private schooling
- expanding free childcare
- restarting SureStart (albeit under a different name)
- expanding free school meals
- expanding school breakfast clubs
- guaranteeing jobs for young people (announced this morning)
- big increases to the minimum wage, especially for the youngest
- expansion of workers rights
- expansion of renters rights
- big increase in infrastructure investment, particularly for renewables
And a load more.
No, I’m not a fan of everything, especially not the OSA, but you can’t expect to agree with every single action your government takes.
As for the government ID thing, it’s hardly an authoritarian’s dream when almost every country on planet Earth does it already. You may not realise it, but we’re very much in the minority for not having this already.
Have a look at that list I rattled off the top of my head and try to tell me they aren’t the actions of a Labour party.
You’re letting your judgement be impaired by blindly focussing on a couple of issues you disagree with rather than looking at the whole picture.
Hansae@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Honestly on Sunak, I didnt particularly like him nor his party nor the policies pushed but the guy did give off the impression that he was genuinely trying to improve things and was giving it his all despite his party being a unruly shitshow.
I get the feeling history will wind up treating him as it did May, a kneecapped PM who did genuinely want to do some good in a political enviroment that didnt exactly allow for it.
danielquinn@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
It’s the expectation.
Boris and Truss were abject morons and Sunak was an insulated, rich Tory. They were expected to be terrible and so we weren’t surprised.
Starmer won in a landslide victory for Labour and went about screwing the poor, arresting old ladies, and presiding over genocide. Conservatives hate him because he’s on the Red Team, and the Left hate him because he acts like a Tory.
If he’d run as a Tory, he’d be scoring higher than everyone since Cameron, but he was supposed to fix the mess, not make it worse.
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
How has he screwed the poor?
- nationalising trains
- nationalising steel
- nationalising a part of our energy sector
- bringing the NHS back under direct public control
- ending various tax-dodging loopholes, such as the IHT for farmers
- windfall tax on energy companies
- charging VAT on private schooling
- expanding free childcare
- restarting SureStart (albeit under a different name)
- expanding free school meals
- expanding school breakfast clubs
- guaranteeing jobs for young people (announced this morning)
- big increases to the minimum wage, especially for the youngest
- expansion of workers rights
- expansion of renters rights
- big increase in infrastructure investment, particularly for renewables
Is any of that screwing the poor?
arresting old ladies
I didn’t realise that when you’re a certain gender or past a certain age the law should no longer apply?
and presiding over genocide
Huh? He banned weapons exports to Israel, publicly condemned Israel for war crimes, sanctioned a bunch of members of their parliament, ramped up aid for Palestine, committed to arresting Netanyahu if he ever steps foot on British soil, resisted joining the US and Israel with their attacks in Iran, and has recognised Palestine.
He can’t do much more than that. Would you like him to invade Israel? I don’t think that’s realistic.
If he’d run as a Tory, he’d be scoring higher than everyone since Cameron, but he was supposed to fix the mess, not make it worse.
How is he making things worse?
Digit@lemmy.wtf 3 weeks ago
Kier is boring
You’d think he’d at least be a bit more lively, with all that powder up his nose.
Remember the 107th rule of acquisition: Win or lose, there’s always Huyperian Beetle Snuff
njm1314@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Sunak and Kier seem like a wash almost.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
Boris’s policies weren’t the worse. He was just absolutely incompetent at actually leading the party/government on a personal level and was prone to slight corruption
steeznson@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Pretty safe to say he’s over-hated. Even like colleagues of mine whom I suspect do not follow politics closely refer to him as things like “Kier Stalin”.
Maybe I’m old fashioned but a PM is essentially an admin role – why do we expect that they be inspirational too.
JiffyBag@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
I feel like people don’t like him because he’s as dull as dishwater. I am not a fan of Kier’s politics, but I think he’s practical and level headed. Following 14 years of a Tory shit show - I’m suprised people aren’t happy with having someone like that in the job.
The biggest mistake he’s making is that people expected a bit of a shift to oppose what the Conservatives were offering but instead he’s also trying to appeal to the right of politics through a lurch to the right. He’s not charasmatic or radical enough for that to succeed, so has pushed away the left only to fail to win over the right. Nobody likes him.
hello_cruel_world@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The biggest mistake he’s making is that people expected a bit of a shift to oppose what the Conservatives were offering
I think it might be the flip flopping, and not really knowing what direction he needs to take the country.
One minute it’s this, next it’s that. His dilly dallying with raynor when it was obvious her tenure was unsustainable. Then bringing in deeply unpopular policies like the OSA and digital id cards.
We have systems in place to counter illegal working. Why do we need the other id? We don’t. It’s a badly thought out rehash of what Blair was pushing in the naughties.
Then we have what most people perceive to be a two tier justice system, abs your can start to see why he’s unpopular.
phutatorius@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
I think he’s practical and level headed
He seems to me frightened of the rightwing media and of Reform and twitchily reactive.
You don’t defeat the enemy by becoming them.
Drewfro66@lemmygrad.ml 3 weeks ago
I think Starmer could be considered a reformer analogous to Stolypin, or perhaps Alexander II. In some ways, Starmer would have been considered a fairly radical social democrat able to appease the working classes, in another time. But now is not the time for moderate reformers who ultimately serve the existing ruling classes.
And the people who say to “Give Starmer a chance!” are the same who, in 1910, were bemoaning Alexander II and Stolypin’s assassinations because “We were just starting to get the reforms we’ve been asking for - and you radicals blew it for all of us!”
The time for reform is over. The people demand revolution.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
He was funny in parliament when calling out boris
nialv7@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Pretty sure voters of one party hates all leaders of other parties. But Kier is additionally also hated by Labour voters, making him lower than everybody.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
I call him that because it’s funny.
Ironically all of the laws he was using to crack down on protests and arrest over Facebook posts were put in place by the tories. The Online Safety Act was also from the tories. He’s just inherited the tools they gave him
steeznson@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Admittedly it is a pretty funny nickname but personally I find it amusing because he’s so non-threatening
Digit@lemmy.wtf 3 weeks ago
Speaking in political compass terms, Stalin was around -5,10.
Starmer’s nearer something like 5,8.
Other side of the economic scale.
Maybe if he disregards the will of the people, and institutes the Digital ID, he can get that up to a 5,10.Either way, this is not what freedom looks like.
Pat_Riot@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
Less popular than the cabbage?
hellfire103@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
I won’t lie, the cabbage was pretty popular. It was Truss who was less than useless as a politician.
phutatorius@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
There probably wasn’t time to conduct a poll before Truss fucked off.
ikidd@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Lettuce.
cyrano@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Fedegenerate@lemmynsfw.com 3 weeks ago
Who’s setting up a lettuce stream? If lettuce streams become a tradition of unwelcome politicians I wouldn’t be mad.
blackn1ght@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
Oh c’mon, he’s no where near that bad.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
It should be noted that The Canary is still fuming that Corbyn didn’t get a third attempt to lose to the Tories.
I didn’t vote for Starmer. I voted for Labour. If he’s ineffective, replace him with somebody better equipped to deal with the threat of Reform.
I live in a shithole town with a migrant hotel, and let me tell you, this place will vote Reform next time. I’m sure sticking them there was cheaper than building proper facilities and hiring an appropriate number of people to process them and handle any needed deportations, but the cost of Reform will dwarf that.
hector@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
I am sure purging all the leftists and reformers out of the left Center option was the better strategy, on the backs of openly false allegations at that. /s
Labor is a fucking joke and it’s going to hand England to the far right that will fix themselves into Power with the help of the US and Russia, same as macron is going to hand over france, and Europe is going to fall like fucking Domino’s to Fascist governments because we have all allowed conservatives to seize our mainstream political parties and Ratchet privilege to the plutocracy. The only reform option is the far right.
redchert@lemmygrad.ml 3 weeks ago
The moderate left fully surrendered to every issue to the right, all in the name of “electability” and “incremental process to socialism”, they chose fascism over being perceived as “pro-russian” and “tankies”
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’m not even British (I’m Canadian) and I don’t like him. Why’d he go after family farmers with aggressive inheritance taxes? That seems like a political dead end. Absolute foolishness.
Farmers usually have a lot of money invested in capital equipment but their lifestyles are anything but lavish. They live a working class life but get taxed (on inheritance) like millionaires, preventing them from handing down the family farm through generations (and allowing wealthy corporate farming operations to consolidate them).
Twig@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
Rich ass farmers paying tax? Not against that in the slightest
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
I prefer farmers being rich ass than bankers honestly. Farmers deserve to be rich, they rarely get a day off.
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
So you support the consolidation of small family farms into large corporate farming operations. Interesting take.
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Huh? You’re pro rich people dodging tax?
Shit loads of multi-millionaires/billionaires were buying farmland as an asset so they didn’t have to pay inheritance taxes out on it, too.
It’s absolutely right that Labour started making them pay tax again (yes, again, they used to do it and family farms still thrived back before Thatcher gave a Tory-voting demographic a tax exception)
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
No, I’m pro-actual-farmer keeping their family farm in the family. People dodging taxes need to be taxed but catching real farmers in the crossfire is not good. It’s very bad.
Digit@lemmy.wtf 3 weeks ago
How are you enjoying Mark Carney? The Governor of the Bank of England during (what I call) “a very British genocide”, (or what others call) “the fit-to-work scandal”, culling >130,000 of the disabled and poor in a decade. Seems to love being appointed, but could he be elected fairly? Carney, Starmer, same “big club”. They do these things to seize power, to maximally extract wealth, and to soft-kill. Because they were told to.
UrbonMaximus@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
What a strange take. I definitely think that we should support farmers, but not by excepting them from inheritance taxes. We should incentives the correct things - If they work the land give them subsidies.
If you don’t tax inheritance you’re creating a generational wealth hoarding. Let’s take Jeremy Clarkson for example - he openly stated that the reason he bought farmland was so that his children can inherit it tax free. If he didn’t have a farming tv show, he would lease that land to actual farmers.
It might be different in other parts of the world, but in the UK, that has relatively high population density, sitting on farm land for generations can be very very lucrative. Most of the richest pieces of real estate in this country were farmland a century or two ago.
Digit@lemmy.wtf 3 weeks ago
My parents sold the farm, I think, largely, on accountant’s advice, to avoid the inheritance tax, or something.
So now I don’t have the farm I grew up presuming was to be mine (or other relatives’) one day, and instead see it get eaten up in consolidation by the rich, like all the other small farms around, merging.
This is not good.
Yay for sensible subsidies. Nay for tax ploys to feed agribusiness monopolies.
phutatorius@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Farmers usually have a lot of money invested in capital equipment but their lifestyles are anything but lavish.
They often hide it, but the farmers I know are far from poor. Like a lot of us, they’re rich in illiquid assets but not in terms of cashflow. That’s my situation too, and I don’t whinge about it.
Inheritance tax is a tax on unearned wealth. There’s no reason to distinguish one asset from all others. Those inheriting almost invariably did nothing to earn it; it’s almost always an accident of birth that puts them in line for an inheritance. That, and the whims of some elderly person. A steeply progressive inheritance tax, with no exceptions besides spouses, would be ideal. And if you’re concerned about corporations grabbing all the arable land, regulate them to prevent any firm directly or indirectly owning more than, say, 10 hectares of land. A similar rule should apply to housing.
chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Providing for one’s own children, passing on family traditions and ways of working, preserving the spaces where childhood memories are created; these are among the most fundamental of human desires. Take those away and your society gives way to nihilism. You make an enemy of every parent in the country.
On the other hand, a strong society understands this at a cultural level and the preservation of family traditions is deeply rooted in the society. This is where you get family farms, family restaurants, family workshops and small businesses that last for hundreds of years and produce some of the best products life has to offer. Japan, France, Italy, and Spain are some examples of countries where this is the case.
As for arbitrary restrictions on corporations: ad-hoc solutions like that rarely work. People find ways of circumventing and undermining such efforts. Instead of one corporation, people will have hundreds, each with its 10 hectares of land.
The more regulations you create, the more you reward people with the money to hire accountants and lawyers to navigate them. On the other hand, traditional farmers and other small family businesses will simply give up trying to navigate the red tape and bail out.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
I still prefer him to the previous administration. He isn’t really making things much worse except from the digital ID thing. Isn’t making things much better either.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
The Internet Wanking License hasn’t been a clear winner either. He voted against that when the Tories were in power, then flipped when they realised they’d be the ones doing all the spying. Wait until Farage gets in and uses that to collect a list of rainbow flag people to bully once he’s done with the brown people.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
That was put in place by the tories.
Also, licence*
Yank detected, opinion rejected
hector@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
What do you call making a masterbaitorbase and connecting ip and id and face to every single computer in a place any organized group could access.
Or cancelling the right to protest, forbidding defenses that acquit accused protesters, calling protesyers terrorists and equating the entire protest with the proscribed group?
You think things are fine? Jesus christ.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
The second paragraph is using legislation implemented by the tories
Digit@lemmy.wtf 3 weeks ago
Lets once again start telling each other, especially the young, often, the story of the boy who cried wolf.
phutatorius@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
His attacks on trans people are also scummy.
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I don’t really see the issue with digital ID per se. Almost all countries in the world do it. We’re very much an outlier for not having one.
Digit@lemmy.wtf 3 weeks ago
This seems factually incorrect at multiple levels.
OwlPaste@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I for one welcome our new racist overlords in 2029… 😞🤢
Luvs2Spuj@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
He’s not unpopular because he’s worse than recent Tory leadership, he’s unpopular because of how much of a disappointment he’s been compared to people’s expectations. Mandatory ID is surely going to improve things in that regard…
ofnadwy@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
Mandatory ID will mean he can do the same thing to naughty citizens as he does to the naughty Labour MPs.