Public largely see Labour in negative terms, with even Labour voters tending to not trust them in key policy areas
Labour’s annual party conference is kicking off this weekend in Liverpool. There is likely to be a very different tone to last year’s gathering, which was held in the aftermath of their landslide victory at the 2024 general election.
Now, just one in seven Britons (14%) approve of the government’s record to date, while seven in ten (69%) disapprove of Labour’s performance in office. This gives a net approval rating of -55, near identical to the final -56 rating for the previous government last July, just before the Conservatives lost power.
Even among Labour voters, a majority (53%) disapprove of the government, with just 29% feeling positively about the record of the government they elected.
Two thirds of Britons (66%) see Labour as out of touch, relative to just 14% seeing them as in touch, while the public believe it’s unclear what the party stands for by a similar ratio (65% vs 16%).
Furthermore, around six in ten Britons describe Labour as weak rather than strong (62% vs 9%), untrustworthy rather than trustworthy (61% vs 14%), and incompetent rather than competent (59% vs 17%). Labour are also twice as likely to be seen as serving their own interests (54%) than trying to do the right thing (25%), or caring about a select few (50%) instead of caring about ordinary people (23%).
A rare point in Labour’s favour is that the public are still more likely to describe them as moderate (37%) than extreme (24%).
In which areas do Britons most trust Labour?
This negativity towards Labour extends to key policy areas, with three quarters of Britons (74-77%) saying they have little to no trust in the party on the cost of living, immigration, taxation, managing the economy, representing people like them, or keeping its promises. In all six cases, only between 15-19% of the public say they have at least a fair amount of trust in Labour.
And these are just the most severe cases. In all of the 18 areas polled, a majority of the public say they do not trust the Labour party, including around seven in ten Britons (68-72%) when it comes to crime, housing, poverty, forming an effective government, supporting businesses, or running councils or public services.
Nonetheless, the party does have some relative strengths: a third of Britons (33%) trust Labour to protect minority groups and 29% have confidence in them representing the UK abroad and on defence matters. Just over a quarter of the public (27%) trust Labour on the NHS, though two thirds (66%) say they have no trust in the party on what has traditionally been one of their strongest issues.
Such is the scale of this lack of trust in Labour, that even among Labour voters themselves, the party holds a negative net trust rating in 11 of our 18 areas. They score particularly low on the cost of living (-25), keeping promises (-22), immigration (-21), taxation (-19) and poverty (-17).
Labour voters do, though, still mostly trust the party to represent the UK abroad (+21), as well as on defence (+17) and the NHS (+14). But these ‘stronger’ trust scores are a notable contrast to how other voters feel about their party: Reform UK’s weakest score across these 18 areas among Reform UK voters was +33, while the Lib Dems received ratings of +23 or above among Lib Dem voters in 17 of them.
Outside of Labour voters, Lib Dems tend to be the most trusting of Labour, though with negative net scores in all areas beyond defence (+5). Running local councils is the area with the largest trust gap between Labour (+1) and Lib Dem voters (-36).
Labour hold a negative trust score among Green voters across the board, with the greatest difference between Labour and Green voters being forming an effective government (-60 vs +5), the environment (-70 vs -4) and protecting minorities (-62 vs +6). Indeed, the last is notable for being the only area polled on where Green voters are the least trusting of Labour out of supporters of all five main parties.
Conservative and Reform UK voters have little trust in Labour in nearly every area, though with higher – if still negative scores – when it comes to protecting minority groups (-11 among Reform UK voters, -33 among Conservative voters).
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Photo: Getty
