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100 Days On But Has Starmer Weathered The Storm?

18 October 2024
| by Field Team

It is difficult to pinpoint when we started talking about the ‘first 100 days’ of a new Government in British politics...

The first 100 days could be seen as an arbitrary yardstick for measuring delivery, an Americanism we have borrowed despite incoming Presidents having an additional six weeks to play with between their election night in November and inauguration in January. Kamala Harris or Donald Trump will have an extra 76 days before they are sworn in and the hard work of Governing starts in earnest. Keir Starmer had ten minutes in the PM’s Audi between Buckingham Palace and No10.


However, a Prime Minister’s first one hundred days has very much crept into our discourse following election night, and so Field’s Research team has worked with Opinium to work out exactly how things have gone for Labour. The results make grim reading for Keir Starmer.

Our polling suggests voters overwhelmingly (56%) feel Labour’s first 100 days in power have gone ‘badly’. Worse still, looking specifically at 2024 Labour voters, the split between those who think the Government’s first 100 days have gone well and those who think it has gone badly is closer than the Government would hope (38% well, 31% badly). Most starkly of all, 20% of Labour voters surveyed said they have some sense of regret at their decision. When we dug down into this 20%, they were disproportionately likely to look an awful lot like the ‘hero’ swing voters Labour targeted so ruthlessly to win power: Leave voters, living in the north of England.


The evidence suggests there could be some degree of buyers’ remorse at play. But by probing the issues themselves that have made Labour’s first 100 days in office so choppy, there is more reason for optimism for the Government. This was the consensus of the panel Field put together for a breakfast event this Thursday to launch the analysis, consisting of former Labour General Secretary Lord Iain McNicol, Financial Times Whitehall Editor Lucy Fisher, and Labour MP Andrew Pakes. Two issues have ‘cut through’ significantly more than any other: ‘freebiegate’ which 76% of our voters had heard something about, and the decision to means test the winter fuel allowance, a story which reached 79% of those polled.


Labour’s support this summer was written off as ‘broad, but shallow’ in some quarters. On this evidence, you could say the same for the sense of dissatisfaction around their early days in office. After a difficult start, Starmer has reset his Number 10 top team, discarded the controversial Sue Gray, and redressed the balance of his operation to make things a little more politically savvy. He’ll roll the pitch so the next round of “tough choices” which follow winter fuel land a little more softly with the public, and putting more consideration into the optics around freebies and donations. We can expect the Labour comms machine, now under Morgan McSweeney’s control, to function a little more efficiently in broadcasting Labour’s wins: Starmer’s handling of the riots, the assault on planning red tape that hinder housebuilding, and the launch of GB Energy have all passed under the radar far too easily.

In short, it’s been a rocky first three months in power for Labour but it’s much too soon to say whether it will have any bearing on voter intentions in four years time. In fact, if the lessons of the first hundred days really have been learned, the experience of weathering their turbulent start might prove to be no bad thing.


Methodology: Polling conducted by Opinium Research on behalf of Field Research. Fieldwork dates 2-4 October 2024 with sample size of 2,055 UK Adults (weighted to be nationally and politically representative).



(Photo provided by Field)

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