But the public are divided on whether Starmer and his party are sleazier than the Tories
Over the past few weeks, senior figures in the Labour government, including prime minister Keir Starmer, have faced criticism for accepting thousands of pounds worth of gifts from party donors, including clothes, glasses and tickets to must-see events.
While far from the first allegations of ‘sleaze’ against politicians in recent years, it comes just months after Labour made ‘serving the country’ a key theme of their election campaign, with their manifesto accusing the Conservatives and SNP of failing to “uphold the standards expected in public life”.
Labour and Starmer have stressed that their actions were within the rules, with Starmer also deciding to pay back £6,000 worth of gifts that received as donations, a move that eight in ten Britons (79%) support. Nonetheless, the controversy has left a mark on the government.
Half (53%) of Britons say they expected Labour to behave well when it came to standards in public office, but this includes 38% who feel they have subsequently behaved poorly. A further 25% had bad expectations from the outset, which they believe Labour has lived down to. Only 18% believe the party has behaved well to date.
Disappointment is fairly uniform across parties, with over four in ten Conservative (45%), Labour (42%) and Lib Dem voters (45%) saying they had expected Labour to behave better than they have. Notably, only a third of Labour voters (34%) say that the new government has behaved as well as they had hoped it would.
Reform UK voters are a little less likely to say Labour haven’t lived up to expectations, only one in three (32%) saying so, but this is due to greater pessimism in the first place, six in ten (59%) saying they always felt Labour would behave poorly in office.
This has meant that, just three months since taking power, six in ten Britons (59%) already describe the Labour government as at least fairly ‘sleazy’ double the 28% who would describe it as not very sleazy or not sleazy at all. Although this is not as high as the three-quarters of the public (77%) who see either the previous Conservative government or British governments in general as sleazy, it is hardly a positive result.
Three in ten Labour voters (30%) have already come to see the new Labour government as sleazy, although they have some way to go to catch up with the six in ten Conservative voters (59%) who say the same of the Tory governments in power between 2019 and 2024.
But although fewer Britons outright describe the Labour government as sleazy than do of the previous Conservative government, they are more divided when asked about it in a direct comparison. A quarter of Britons (25%) see the Labour government as more sleazy than its predecessor, against a third (33%) who see it as less sleazy and 28% who say they are about as sleazy as each other.
And when comparing Keir Starmer with his predecessor directly, the Labour leader comes off worse overall, with 35% of the public saying Starmer is sleazier than Rishi Sunak, compared to 28% who feel the opposite and 23% viewing the two as equally sleazy as one another.
But when comparing Keir Starmer against Boris Johnson, the answer is significantly more one-sided, with nearly half (45%) saying that Starmer is less sleazy than Johnson, against a quarter (25%) who feel Starmer is the sleazier of the two.
How unacceptable have Labour’s actions been compared to other examples?
Perhaps one reason why the public tend to see Starmer as less sleazy than Johnson is that fewer Britons see the current government’s controversies as unacceptable than the stories seen during Johnson’s time in office.
While two-thirds of Britons (66%) feel it’s unacceptable for politicians to receive complimentary tickets to attend concerts or sport events, as several senior Labour MPs have done, more than eight in ten Britons (84%) feel it is wrong for party donors to be awarded peerages, as Boris Johnson attempted to do to Tory donor Stuart Marks.
And while three-quarters of the public (76%) see it as unacceptable to receive gifts like clothes from party donors, as per Keir Starmer, nine in ten Britons (89%) view holding parties during a lockdown as out of order, as per Boris Johnson. A similar number (88%) say it is wrong for the government to award contracts to party donors, as occurred with PPE during the Covid pandemic.
How do you feel about Labour ministers receiving gifts from party donors, wider standards in public office, and everything else? Have your say, join the YouGov panel, and get paid to share your thoughts. Sign up here.
Photo: Getty
