British public more positive towards new government than its predecessor, but overall are still negative about the state of politics
As we approach two months since Keir Starmer became prime minister and the new government took power, opinions are beginning to form as to how Labour are doing in office. YouGov’s political trackers, keeping an ever-watchful eye over the British public’s attitudes to politics, suggest that while attitudes are currently more positive towards the new government than they were to its predecessor before the election, significant levels of negativity have already emerged.
Government approval
The last Conservative government was not particularly popular towards the end. In their final month in power, only around one in seven Britons (12-15%) approved of their record, against more than seven in ten (71-74%) who disapproved.
Relative to this, the new Labour government is somewhat more popular. Currently, roughly one in four Britons (23%) hold a positive view of their record so far, which while already a fall from the three in ten (29%) who approved in mid-July, is still a higher level of government approval than for over two years before the election.
More worrying for the new government will be that half of the British public (51%) already disapprove of their record, with this an increase of 20 percentage points in just one month. So while it is true to say that the new government is currently more popular than its predecessor was before the election, it is more a case of being less unpopular than popular in its own right.
But how unusual is such unpopularity for a freshly elected government? Compared to YouGov data at roughly the same point after other recent elections, the current approval for the government is undoubtedly below average, with only feelings towards Theresa May’s government after the 2017 election (23%) being similarly low.
The disapproval figure is perhaps less atypical, being in the same ballpark as disapproval nearly two months after the 2005 and 2017 elections (both 53%). But for a brand-new government, it is certainly lower than after the last wholesale change in government in 2010, with approval in David Cameron’s coalition 23 percentage points higher and disapproval 18 points lower at this point of the parliament than with Keir Starmer’s Labour government.
Looking further back, today’s government is less popular than last time Labour took power, with Gallup polling figures from the time suggesting around two-thirds of Britons (68%) approved of the nascent Blair government during its first two months in power, while only one in five (22%) disapproved.
However, when the Conservatives took power in 1979, against a gloomier economic backdrop, only a third of the public (34%) approved of the government during the earliest post-election polls, against half (48%) who held a negative view.
Explore the data for this tracker here
Government handling of key issues
When it comes to approval of the government’s record on specific issues, it is again the case that public opinion is less negative than it was about the prior government, but still negative.
Across the 15 issues which YouGov tracks, the average proportion of Britons saying an issue is being handled badly by the government has fallen from 64% to 50%, though the average number saying an issue is being handled well has held steady at 24%. Rising to compensate has been the number saying they ‘don’t know’, perhaps yet to fully form an opinion or currently giving the government the benefit of the doubt.
But there exists clear variation between different issues. Some have seen an increase in the proportion of Britons saying that the government is doing well on handling them, while others have seen this number fall.
The number saying that crime is being handled well, for instance, has risen from 16% before the election to 27% today, an 11-percentage point increase, with the share of Britons feeling that health issues are being tackled effectively rising a similar 10 points from 11% to 21%.
Balancing this is a 16-point fall in the number feeling terrorism is being handled well. Before the election, this was the only issue about which more Britons felt the government was doing a good job on than a bad one. Now, though, the public are fairly evenly split, with a third (33%) feeling the threat of terrorism is being tackled well and another third (34%) feeling the government is handling the matter poorly.
Other clear shifts in public feeling as to whether the government is handling an issue well include housing (+8, compared to 1st July) and immigration (+7) in a positive direction, and unemployment (-8) and inflation (-7) in a negative one.
It is nonetheless crucial to underline that, even where there have been improvements to the government’s ratings, there are currently no major policy issues regularly polled for which public approval of the government’s handling is net positive.
Explore the data for this tracker here
Most important issues
At the time of the election, the most important issues in the eyes of the public were health, which was a top three issue for 52% of Britons; the economy, a key issue for 51% of the public; and immigration and asylum, a priority for four in ten Britons (41%). Today, they remain the most dominant issues in the public mind, but the balance between them has shifted a little.
Since the election, the proportion of Britons saying they view immigration and asylum as a major issue has increased from 41% to 48%, while the number of people viewing crime as a major issue has jumped from one in five (19%) to more than a quarter (27%). This no doubt reflects the dominant nature of the riots in recent weeks, during which a belief these were top issues spiked at 51% and 39% respectively.
Concern around pensions also appears to be emerging, with twice as many Britons (12%) saying it is a major issue now than before the election (6%). By contrast, the number saying health is one of the three most important issues facing the country has fallen 12 percentage points to 40%.
Explore the data for this tracker here
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Photo: Getty
