Labour at record poll low with Greens just one point behind

[Celerity]

Support for government halves since general election to 17 per cent in worst YouGov result before make-or-break elections for Sir Keir Starmer next year

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/labour-election-poll-voting-intention-269v5xz7w

https://archive.ph/ldkD9

Labour has fallen to its lowest rating in a YouGov poll as the party haemorrhages support to the Greens, Reform and Liberal Democrats. The poll for The Times finds that just 17 per cent of voters would back the party were a general election held today.



The Green Party has recorded its highest level of support, winning the backing of 16 per cent of all voters. This is more than double the 6.7 per vote share that the Greens won at the last election and the party has risen six points in the polls since Zack Polanski became leader last month.





The poll finds that Labour, the Conservatives, the Greens and the Liberal Democrats are within two points of one another while Reform retains a significant lead with 27 per cent support. It will add to the concerns of Labour MPs after the party’s humiliating defeat in the Caerphilly by-election last week where it was pushed into third place behind Plaid Cymru and Reform with 11 per cent of the vote.

Downing Street insists that Sir Keir Starmer will be able to turn the party’s performance around before elections in May which are seen as make or break for the prime minister. He faces the contradictory task of appealing to Labour voters on the right who have deserted the party for Reform while trying to win back voters to the left of centre who are now supporting the Greens.

snip

[Ping Tung]

1. "Were parties here divided merely by a greediness for office,..

"Were parties here divided merely by a greediness for office,...to take a part with either would be unworthy of a reasonable or moral man." -Thomas Jefferson

[Just_Vote_Dem]

2. Didn't Labour have a big win recently?

And now they're dive bombing? What gives?

[BannonsLiver]

4. Voters gave them about 5 minutes to fix all of the problems the Tories created.

Obviously, that could not happen. Their media has adopted a similar tone that our political media had in the back half of the Biden administration, which is "everything is terrible." Labour's also getting stuck with the bill on the Brexit debacle, which has led to economic stagnation that won't be going away, no matter who is running things. Starmer also has basically no charisma, so he can't bullshit his way out of it, either.

[Just_Vote_Dem]

5. Thanks for the update n/t

[Emrys]

6. With Labour, you're talking about entirely self-inflicted wounds

For some reason, they appear to have taken their resounding majority at the last general election as grounds for extreme complacency and skewing pretty hard right. We can see how that's working out.

Starmer has no vision whatsoever and reminds me of John Major without the charisma and with fewer principles (my comment about charisma is an ironic joke, if people here are unfamiliar with Major, the one-nation Tory stopgap after Thatcher who unexpectedly won an election in his own right, and was the epitome of grey, despite his efforts to fend off the extremists in his party, which I have to acknowledge). Starmer's staffed his cabinet with loyalists who're generally useless, and don't even perform well on camera, while dissenting voices, largely on the left, have been purged from the party or sanctioned. He and his advisers are the least sure-footed politically the country's seen since Liz Truss.

In terms of Brexit, Starmer's dismissed the idea of running another referendum out of hand, preferring to try to "make Brexit work", so I can have no sympathy if Labour are now being blamed for its all too predictable effects, which some of the cabinet have tried to shift the blame for onto immigrants, which is utterly heinous.

Labour began its term by seemingly focusing on some of the most unpopular measures it could enact, e.g. refusing to take measures to address child poverty, removing heating allowances from state pensioners, and hiking National Insurance rates (placing more of a burden on small businesses and driving some of them to the wall) while point-blank refusing to contemplate taxing the better-off.

There are unsurprisingly deep rumblings within Labour to replace Starmer as Prime Minister, even before next year's council elections, when the incumbent party usually takes a spanking, and which will likely be catastrophic for Labour anyway.

The only saving grace is that, short of a wholesale rebellion and split within Labour, which is unlikely, it has a few more years before it has to face the electorate again.

Polling currently strongly flatters Reform UK, but that won't necessarily be reflected in a real-world general election, as the Caerphilly by-election last week showed, when Plaid Cymru handily beat Reform into second place despite polls showing Reform either in the lead or neck-and-neck with Plaid. The result was likely at last partially due to concerted tactical voting, plus the benefit of a very well known and respected local candidate for Plaid Cymru. But Labour's share of the vote fell to unthinkable levels, so other parties (like the Greens in England, the SNP and Plaid Cymru in Scotland and Wales, and possibly the Lib Dems in places where they still have relatively strong support) are more likely to benefit from any tactical vote to keep Reform out.

But something has to change ASAP, or we'll likely see a Reform government in a few years. Luckily, they have a habit of quickly falling on their faces whenever they get a sniff of power, sometimes even before that, but few of us want to see them get a chance to do that on a national scale.

[dutch777]

3. There is not much inviting from the traditional parties. They don't move the needle and the UK is just in the doldrums.

They shot themselves in both feet with Brexit with most of the supposed benefits just smoke and mirrors never to be realized. Maybe Reform wins on a control immigration platform but will deliver nothing that really moves the dial to get a once again economically and culturally ascendant Great Britain which is what the the average voter really wants and which they will never achieve. They can thumb their nose at the EU but they are outclassed by shear demographic and economic size. I suppose Trump will embrace them closer with Reform wins but that is a fleeting and poor win at best.