Why dour, unpopular and hypocritical Keir Starmer won’t last more than one term as PM

Impeccable working-class background (did you know his father was a tool maker?). Doting father and loving husband. He's on the sensible left. Quite photogenic in a centrist dad sort of a way, especially since he started wearing designer specs. He likes cats. He even got a knighthood for his public service.

After years of the Tory soap opera which gave us the blubbering idiot Boris Johnson and the crazy lady Liz Truss, not to mention Brexit, the country should be celebrating that there is a sensible grown-up in Number 10. But as his first 100 days in office approaches, Starmer is proving to be as unpopular as Rishi Sunak, the man he comprehensively trounced only a few weeks ago. If there was a general election tomorrow, would Labour under Keir Starmer win it?

Approval rating plunging

The polls suggest it would be a struggle. A survey last weekend by Opinium for the Observer newspaper reveals that Starmer is now less popular than Sunak. His approval rating has plunged by 45 points since the election in July. Half of voters disapprove of him, with only a quarter giving him a thumbs up. That gives Starmer a net rating of minus 26 per cent, one less than Sunak.

Embarrassing blow for Starmer as Labour members vote for winter fuel payment U-turn

It's tempting to blame the freebies scandal for the plunge in the Prime Minister’s popularity. The revelation that he accepted nearly £20,000 from Labour peer Lord Alli to buy designer suits and specs was greeted with derision by an electorate still struggling with the cost-of-living crisis. “He should have gone to Specsavers, like the rest of us,” was the general response.

When it was revealed that his wife Victoria, who would look great in a £20 frock from Primark, had also accepted thousands of pounds from the generous Alli to spend on designer clothes, people shrugged and said: “They are as bad as the Tories.”

Starmer’s image destroyed

All it took to destroy Starmer’s carefully crafted message of “a government of service” was a couple of frocks from Me + Em. That, and an astonishingly early decision by Rachel Reeves to ditch the winter fuel allowance for all but the very poorest pensioners, destroyed Starmer’s self-image as a man of the people.

“Politicians are all the same, you can’t trust any of them,” shrugged voters, as further revelations showed the bank of Alli funded Angela Rayner’s New Year break in New York with her former lover Sam Tarry, as well as providing Starmer and his family with a Soho penthouse for some peace and quiet during the general election campaign.

Those readers with long memories will recall the Ecclestone affair, a million-pound scandal involving Tony Blair and F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone that marred the first few months of the new Labour government in 1997.

Arguably this scandal, dubbed “cash for access” by the Conservatives, was far more damaging than Starmer accepting free stuff from a friend, yet Blair, still in his charming man phase, was able to shrug it off with a grin and an apology. "I’m a pretty straight kind of guy," he told the nation in a BBC interview and people gave him the benefit of the doubt, for a few more years at least.

‘We do need joy’

Unlike Blair, Starmer has no political capital to fall back on. Genuine enthusiasm greeted Blair’s landslide victory in 1997, with voters daring to believe a new dawn had really broken. Starmer won a majority almost as big only 87 days ago, yet already the voters seem fed up of him.

Watching his conference speech earlier this week was painful, and not just because he inexplicably mixed up Israeli hostages with “sausages”. He tried, literally, to inject joy into his message, declaring to the still-loyal Labour delegates that people want respite from the crises that have dogged Britain in recent years.

“…we do need joy, we do need that in our lives,” he declared. But no one, perhaps not even Starmer, believes that he is the man to bring happiness to a nation bitterly exhausted by a series of catastrophes. He just doesn’t have what it takes.

Those who know him argue that privately he is funny, loyal, empathetic. Publicly, where it matters, he comes across as a buttoned-up, disapproving technocrat, even a tad weird. And now, perhaps fatally, he is seen as a hypocrite, enjoying lavish corporate hospitality at his beloved Arsenal while elderly women shiver in the cold, torn between eating or heating.

Johnson’s gold wallpaper

Voters were not surprised when Boris Johnson accepted cash from a Tory donor to spend on £800 rolls of gold wallpaper for Number 10. It was on brand. But Starmer taking freebies has come as a crashing disappointment.

Most voters expect more from a Labour leader, especially one who acknowledged in his first speech as Prime Minister that the lack of trust between politicians and the people can only be healed by “actions not words”. Starmer’s recent actions have further eroded that trust.

His money grubbing is also a gift to his political opponents. The SNP – not surprisingly, given that Scottish Labour is their biggest threat in the 2026 Scottish Parliament elections – yesterday wrote to the Westminster Standards Commissioner demanding an investigation into Lord Alli’s donations.

But the damage has already been done. Four-time Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson once said that the Labour party is a moral crusade, or it is nothing. Starmer emphasised the quote in his 2021 conference speech. Three years later, he has jeopardised the party’s historic mission for a rack of expensive suits. Free-gear Keir may well turn out to be a one-term prime minister.