Poll to Poll

As the contest to replace Rishi Sunak as Leader of the Conservative Party gets underway, the candidates for the job would do worse than assess the findings of an Ipsos poll this week. Those questioned were asked which were the most important reasons why the Conservatives lost the general election. Top of the list was the 51% who cited poor delivery on the NHS, followed by 50% saying too many scandals involving the Conservative Party, 46% saying the party was not trustworthy and the same proportion saying the party was out of touch with what ordinary people wanted. 44% said they felt the party was “incompetent” with 43% citing poor delivering in helping to tackle the cost-of-living crisis, the same proportion who cited generally the fact that the country was just ready for a change in government. 41% said poor delivery on immigration was one of the most important reasons why the Conservatives lost, with the same proportion again citing Liz Truss’s time as Prime Minister. Ipso...

Opinium has published its first polling for The Observer since the General Election. Of note, the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, is clearly in his honeymoon period, with a net approval rating of +19%. News about the football and the attempted assassination of Donald Trump seems to have captured the public’s interest more than UK politics. According to the poll, 91% of those questioned had heard about the assassination attempt on the former President, with 90% having heard about England loosing to Spain in the Euro 2024 final and 83% having heard about Gareth Southgate standing down as the England team manager. In contrast, 67% said they had heard about Rishi Sunak standing down as the Leader of the Conservative Party, 65% had heard about the King’s Speech setting out the Government’s legislative plans and 55% had heard about Vaughan Gething standing down as First Minister of Wales. In respect of the King’s Speech, Opinium measured the desirability compared to the achievability ...

Speaking at the start of the year the new Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, spoke of a "decade of national renewal" being the "central, defining purpose" of a future Labour government. Fast forward to today, and for those now in Government the question will be whether the election results can give Labour any confidence at the prospect of a decade in power. Some might conclude that it is absurd to be asking this question, given Labour’s 172 seat majority in the Commons. That is just 7 short of the majority New Labour secured in 1997 which ushered in 13 years of Labour rule. However, dig deeper, and the reality is that Labour’s victory is thin. According to the election results Labour won on Thursday having secured around 9.7 million votes, equivalent to 33.7% of the votes cast. To set that into context, according to House of Commons Library data , that compares to the 13.5 million votes (43.2% vote share) Labour got in 1997. What is more, the total number of ...