The prime minister is struggling to communicate how his government will address the significant problems facing the UK. While the public readily accepts that the last government left a mess, selling Labour’s remedies as necessary or fair is proving more challenging.
The incoming government’s first job was to assign blame for the country’s current woes. This proved relatively easy, given the last government’s unpopularity and the Conservatives’ poor campaign.
Over two in five (44%) think the last government’s handling of things is to blame for the current problems facing the UK. Perhaps it is no surprise that Labour is seen as better to deal with these problems than the Conservatives by a margin of more than two-to-one (35% v 16%).
While the government has successfully scored that open goal, maintaining public support for Labour on its own merits has been much harder. Over half (51%) of the public are now pessimistic that the new government will be successful in tackling the problems facing the country. This includes a fifth (21%) of the 9.7 million voters that backed Labour only six weeks ago.
This pessimism is not helped by the language of both the prime minister and the chancellor. Last week, Keir Starmer made a speech warning of a “painful” budget from Rachel Reeves in October. Despite widespread acceptance that the Tories are to blame for the state of the public finances, voters are surprisingly divided on whether these problems merit such a response (39% think a “painful” budget is necessary, but 34% think it is not).
It also appears they are losing goodwill due to what some see as a cynical approach to governing. Almost half (46%) think Labour was not open and honest during the election campaign (even more say the same about the Tories but then the electorate happily punished them with 24% of the vote).
As a result, voters are not only questioning the necessity of the coming budget, but also its fairness. Half (50%) think the government’s decisions about where to save money and where to raise additional revenue are going to be unfair, while only 21% think they will be fair.
Part of this has been down to the communication of the financial “black hole” and how to fix it. Many now think the first act of the government is plugging a one-off fiscal gap primarily by targeting pensioners, a group most voters still think of as vulnerable. This is probably not what Labour wanted to get across.
Leaning heavily into the idea that an omelette requires breaking a few eggs, the prime minister now scores well on competence and decisiveness. However, Starmer has also taken huge hits on being in touch (from a net score of +4 in June to -14 now), on being likeable (-1 to -12), and on being trustworthy (-3 to -11).
This seems likely to store up problems for the government even in their first few months, unless they get better at communicating their long-term strategy. Things will only get harder once a new Conservative leader is ready to benefit from the unpopular decisions all governments have to make.
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James Crouch is head of policy and public affairs at market researchers Opinium