YouGov poll shows more people than ever disapprove of the Government as net approval rating hits -59
Daily Telegraph 07/01/26
The Labour Government’s popularity has plunged to a new low despite attempts by Sir Keir Starmer to reset his premiership.
A YouGov tracker monitoring the popularity of the current administration shows the Government’s net approval rating is now -59, its lowest since Sir Keir took power.
Seventy per cent of voters now disapprove of the Government, according to polling carried out on Jan 5 – an increase on the previous peak of 69 per cent.
Rishi Sunak’s government had a record net approval score of -63 in October 2022, weeks into taking office. Baroness May’s low point was -61 in May 2019, while Liz Truss’s government recorded a nadir of -68, also in October 2022.
The amount of people who approve of Labour’s performance in office has also fallen, reaching a joint record low of 11 per cent.
The last time so few voters approved of Sir Keir’s administration was in September following the resignation of Angela Rayner and the sacking of Lord Mandelson.
Ms Rayner quit as Sir Keir’s deputy in the wake of a Telegraph investigation exposing her tax affairs, while Lord Mandelson was dismissed after fresh revelations over his friendship with the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The YouGov polling comes ahead of the May local elections, with some Labour MPs expected to demand Sir Keir’s departure if their party performs as badly as expected.
Sir Keir has attempted to reset his premiership with a focus on the cost of living and a promise to the public that Britain would be “turning a corner” in 2026.
But his new approach was almost immediately undercut by scrutiny over his positions on Donald Trump’s removal of Nicolas Maduro, the now-former Venezuela leader, and the US president’s subsequent military threats to Greenland.
On Tuesday, Sir Keir told his Cabinet ministers to ignore the party’s current polling woes and come together for “the fight of our political lives” against Reform UK.
The Prime Minister told his top team that by the next general election, the public will face a choice between “a Labour Government renewing the country, or a Reform movement that feeds on grievance, decline and division”.
He said: “They want a weaker state, they want to inject bile into our communities, they want to appease Putin. This is the fight of our political lives and one that we must relish.
“I do not underestimate the scale of the task. But I have no doubt about this team. Governments do not lose because polls go down. They lose when they lose belief or nerve. We will do neither.”
Sir Keir insisted Labour would be judged at the next general election – expected in 2029 – on the economy, the NHS and whether people felt “more safe and secure” in their communities.
A week after the general election in July 2024, Labour was polling at an average of 35 per cent of the vote across major pollsters, The Telegraph’s own poll tracker shows.
But the party’s average share of support has now plummeted to 17.4 per cent, putting it behind Reform (29 per cent) and the Conservatives (19 per cent).
Labour’s share of the vote has been hit by both Reform’s surge in popularity and an uptick in the performance of the Greens (15.7 per cent) since Zack Polanski became their leader last year.
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