How's Starmer doing?

The public hate all PMs, no matter how they're doing

It’s a long-standing British tradition to hate the incumbent Prime Minister.

A PM can only be popular before their tenure, and occasionally after it - never during.

Polling on this dates back to 1977: the public is almost always dissatisfied with their Prime Minister.

Margaret Thatcher today is the third most popular historical PM with the British public (behind Churchill and Peel). But in 1980, barely a year into her first term, more than 60% of the public were dissatisfied with her performance.

So, an individual might be intelligent, honest, hard-working and a great candidate for PM. But on entering Number 10, the public perception of them transforms and they become a useless liar and sleazebag. Upon exit, the public will switch back to a generally positive view of them: creating a sort of U-shaped chart.

Starmer’s popularity dropped by six percentage points the week before the election. He didn’t do anything, and he went on to win a massive majority: but the closer you orbit to Downing Street, the more your popularity falls.

This effect makes it hard to know when a Prime Minister is truly doing a good or bad job. Whether they are fixing the country or breaking the law - the public will dislike them either way for as long as their PM.

So - how is Starmer doing?

Bad deals and U-turns

First, his errors. As I see, it has committed two major ones.

The Chagos deal. We’ve all made some bad deals in our time, but I can’t say I’ve ever given away a property then spent billions renting it back. But that is exactly what Starmer seemed to do with the Chagos Islands: handing the islands to Mauritius for free, then paying Mauritius to lease them back.

Mauritius sold the islands to Britain in 1965 as part of a decolonisation deal, and used the territory for a military base.

There is clearly logic to the Chagos deal. The fact that Trump has signed it off proves it was essential to hand the islands back to Mauritius. If a better deal was available, Trump would’ve leaped at the opportunity to chime in.

But the government has monumentally failed to communicate this to the public. They seemed to hope this blow over, giving opposition leaders an open goal and turning a territory most of us had never heard of into a battleline at the next election.

And secondly, Starmer’s u-turn on winter fuel allowance. Cutting winter fuel allowance from the wealthiest pensioners was the right thing to do. People in their early 60s have 9 times as much personal wealth as people in their early 30s. It makes no sense for the taxpayer to contribute to Alan Sugar’s heating bill (incidentally, the Daily Mail thought so too - but seems they’ve changed their mind now). Starmer’s reforms meant the pensioners that need the allowance still benefit, but the treasury stops handing free money to people wealthier than the average taxpayer.

Whether or not the policy is the right one, Starmer absorbed all of the political pain of tightening the winter fuel allowance criteria. U-turning now only serves to do two things: return the issue to the political agenda and voters’ minds; and make all that political pain for nothing.

The positives

But look, for his mistakes (and that’s ignoring his brief stint of taking every freeby he could find), I still think Starmer is doing a net positive job for the country and things are improving.

NHS waiting lists are falling. Slowly, yes, but it’s the first time they are falling and not rising since COVID. Even pre-COVID, waiting lists were rising year-on-year. It’s looking likely that this will be the first 12-month period in many that the waiting list will fall.

Britain is currently the fastest-growing economy in the G7, a pledge that Starmer actually ditched perhaps because it seemed too ambitious. Economic growth can only be a good thing, especially when - post-covid - we were the slowest G7 economy to recover.

Not to mention, house building is up 25% quarter-on-quarter as Starmer stares down the NIMBYs. Public sector workers are making more money. Train companies are being renationalised. Sensible employment rights are making their way through Parliament. And, of course, shielding the UK from most of Trump’s tariff chaos through their unlikely bromance (Starmer has outlasted Musk as a pal of the Pres).

In less than a year, it’s a pretty impressive hit list.

The key to his continued success will be party management. Starmer’s big majority is made up of many new MPs, some who will have strong convictions and big ambitions. As his halo fades, they’ll plot against him, make mischief and push back against his policies. He’ll need to spend a lot more time on party management, which may come at the expense of big reform.