Is Starmer’s Honeymoon Period Already Over?

When new leaders enter office, their "honeymoon period" often leads to their approval rising among the electorate. However, Starmer's is already on the decline just over a month into his premiership. So what's caused this drop? And how can he recover?

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[scooble]

Let's face it, the "at least they're not the Tories" was a pretty low bar and not much of a jumping off point

[jhunt]

Labour weren't wanted. It's that the Tories weren't wanted even more.

[ilovehorseshorses]

The Tories did more to get Labour in power than Labour themselves lol

[MrHwsmp]

Labour didn't "win" the election as much as the Conservatives "lost" it by alienating the people who first voted for them in 2019 (with a mixture of broken promises and incompetence), while at the same time alienating large chunks of their base who punished them by voting for Reform. Starmer won with fewer votes than Corbyn got when he lost in 2019, and IIRC, the total Tory+Reform vote was more than what Labour got. What this means is that Starmer wasn't elected on a wave of "mass enthusiasm" for anything he said or did, but more of a grudging, "well let's give this guy a try, how can he be worse?" kind of mood. No surprise then that there's not much public appetite for cutting him some slack.

[cathallynch]

The Tories spent 14 years blaming Labour for problems they made themselves, so we can allow Labour a few weeks to point out what they inherited from Sunak was worse than anyone thought.

[litetaker]

He was elected just over a month ago. Parliament is in recess. Unexpected shit happened but it's been dealt with as quickly as possible. I feel like a lot of people expect MIRACLES out of a new government. Jesus Christ give this guy some more time! It's unacceptable to pass judgment on a new govt so damn quickly and they can't undo the mess of the previous 10-14 years in one month!

[anthonydoyle]

But if the wimter fuel is means tested, wouldnt that mean the people who need it still keep it?

[eknoorsinghM]

For a News Channel, that's all about Graphs. It blows my mind that they don't have Legends for their graphs. Like show me what does, Green and Red represents. Maybe they should take a course on Brilliant on how to make graphs

[carlosmiguelteixeiraott]

Starmer was never popular, sure he had good approval ratings, but that's only due to the comparison with the Tories, if the Labor candidate had been a flaming bag of dog poop it would have been viewed favorably too.

Now that the Tories are out of power he has to stand on his own merits and he doesn't have much.

[antons]

Kier Starmer has single handedly lost the respect of the majority of the U.K. electorate already!

[Robert-vwod]

there was never a honeymoon period.
The problem we have now are deep rooted and are the results of politicians actions over the last 20 to 30 years maybe even longer . giving out harsh sentences is always a bad sign.

[keithrrundown]

Starmer does not have a majority 34% voted him in 66% against.

[mabeSc]

People seem to forget that the only reason Starmer was voted in was because he was the less bad option.

[arkan]

Literally who are these people that expected Starmer to fix 15 years of tory decline in a matter of weeks??

[John-nyjn]

I think we need some perspective here - I didn’t vote for Starmer but it has been a month, hardly enough time to start getting the pitchforks before they’ve even started to make changes

[joncarter]

He seemed to show more concern and took more action over the riots than the cause of them and his party only got in because they weren't the Tories.

The honeymoon period was always going to be short, his bungled handling of his first crisis ensured it!

[lukepardoe]

14 years of tory government people have no problem- less than 30days of a Labour government people are outraged.

[TheCuggsmeister]

His biggest failing is refusing to acknowledge any of the reasons why the recent protests began. He totally ignored them like they either didn't exist or had no validity at all.

[xXTheBennyXx]

Hey I recognize this! You come to a buildsite that you have just arrived to and the project managment comes to you and ask why it's not finished 2 weeks ago.

[EricvanWickern]

Not really surprising given that labour didn't actually gain many voters in the election. I hope he realises that he's got the job because of how much people hated the tories, not becaise of how popular he was...