Keir Starmer is officially the most unpopular party leader in parliament, according to new polls.
A survey for ITV’s Good Morning Britain found that Starmer has the lowest rating out of all the major party leaders, less than 100 days after he won a huge majority in parliament.
Starmer’s net favourability dropped to -20, while the Tories’ Rishi Sunak was slightly higher at -16.
Reform’s Nigel Farage was at -8 and the Liberal Democrats’ Ed Davey had the highest rating at -4.
The pollsters at Survation also found more than twice as many voters believe the government is performing poorly (50%) compared to the number who believe Labour is doing a good job (21%).
Even among the voters who backed Labour at July’s general election, only a quarter believe the party’s performance over the last three months has been good (25.2%) and even fewer (7.4%) thought it had been very good.
And, in an extra blow to Starmer, a whopping quarter of those Labour supporters (24%) agreed the government’s performance was “poor”.
Tellingly, only 5% of those aged 65 and over thought the current government was doing a good job.
Survation’s findings also suggested this decline in the prime minister’s popularity may come down to the backlash over Labour’s decision to restrict winter fuel payments to those on pension credit.
Almost two-thirds (61%) of those polled said they believe that allowance should be available to all pensioners, compared to a third (34%) who said otherwise.
Similarly, voters overwhelmingly decided ministers should reject gifts from donors – that includes holidays, according to 75% of respondents, and event tickets, according to 74%.
It comes after Starmer was revealed to have accepted more than £100,000 in free gifts since 2019, more than any other sitting MP.
A greater number of respondents also said the rules on accepting gifts have to be changed after ministers claimed they had followed parliamentary procedures by declaring their freebies.
When presented with the poll’s findings on Good Morning Britain, the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Pat McFadden defended the government’s record.
“I think we’ve done a lot of good things in the first 100 days,” the minister told ITV.
“In regards to the polls, they’re always there – I’d probably be more focused on the three months before the next election, than the three months after the last one.”
Although he did admit there were some headlines from the last few weeks that he “didn’t like”, he said Labour has brought a “stable government” to the UK.