43% of Britons say Labour hasn’t done anything positive yet, while changes to winter fuel payments are seen as the worst thing they’ve done
Today marks 100 days since Labour returned to power after their landslide victory in July’s election. But their first few months in office have been far from smooth, with reception to their initial actions predominantly negative, key politicians falling in popularity and controversies tainting the party’s image.
Yet response to individual actions of the government has been mixed. Six in ten Britons approve of the way they settled the junior doctor strikes, with 56-57% feeling positively towards decisions to keep the two-child limit on child benefits, lifting the ban on new onshore wind farms and suspending some arms sales to Israel.
On the other hand, majorities of Britons disapprove of the means testing of winter fuel payments (55%) and releasing some prisoners early to avoid jail overcrowding (68%).
But which of these do the public see as the government’s biggest successes and failures so far? We asked Britons to describe in their own words what they see as Labour’s single best and worst action since coming to power, and used our AI-powered Topic Quantifier model to categorise the responses.
What have been Labour’s best achievements since coming to power?
With mood towards the government so negative, it’s perhaps not surprising that many weren’t able or willing to credit them with any specific achievement. For 43% of Britons, Labour haven’t done anything in their first 100 days worthy of being described as the ‘best thing’.
As would be expected, this feeling is highest among supporters of the parties most vocally opposed to Labour, with 61% of Conservatives and 72% of Reform UK voters of the view the government has only taken negative actions so far.
Notably, this is also the most common sentiment even among those who backed Labour in July, with more than one in five Labour voters (22%) also of the view that the government has not yet made a single positive improvement.
Of course, that does leave many Labour voters who are able to pick out successes. One in ten (10%) see the government’s honesty about the state of the economy as their top source of praise, with around one in twenty (4-6%) singling out each of Labour’s handling of the riots, early steps on reforming the NHS, reforms to the energy sector, ending public sector strikes, scrapping the Rwanda scheme and means-testing the winter fuel payments as the best thing they’ve done.
What have been Labour’s biggest mistakes since coming to power?
Britons had an easier time finding a specific answer when it comes to the worst thing Labour’s done in office so far, with only 4% of the public feeling the new government has done nothing that could be described as the ‘worst’.
Once again, there is one response that is dominant over all the others – in this case, the means-testing of winter fuel payments for pensioners. One in three Britons (34%) see this as the biggest single fault of Starmer’s government, with a further 3% viewing the perceived ‘hitting’ of pensioners and the poor by spending cuts as Labour’s greatest misstep so far.
Labour voters are exactly as likely as the population at large to see it as the top mistake, while 42% of Reform UK voters and 52% of Conservatives likewise pick it out as the government’s gravest mistake to date.
The freebies scandal is the negative deed highlighted by the second largest number of Britons, with 7% of the public, including one in eight Labour voters (12%), seeing it as the worst thing the Labour government have done in their first 100 days.
Reform UK voters have a slightly distinct take on the failings of the new government, with one in nine (11%) viewing Labour’s perceived inaction on immigration and ending of the Rwanda scheme as their biggest failing and 7% feeling that ‘everything’ Labour has done counts as their single worst action.
But perceptions of Labour’s faults don’t solely vary by partisanship, there’s a clear age split too. Understandably, perception that the means testing of winter fuel payments as the single worst thing Labour have done increases with age, with six in ten over 65s (61%) singling it out as the biggest mistake of Starmer’s first 100 days.
But among those aged between 18 and 24, only 9% see it as the most unwelcome news from the new government, around the same as the 8% who see Labour’s support for Israel as the worst aspect of their earliest months in office.
YouGov are continuing to offer innovations and new products in the AI space - reach out to us if you think our AI topic quantifier model could be of use to you in your future projects.
Photo: Getty
