‘Many voters don’t know Starmer or his policies – but he can still win a landslide’

Labour are now odds-on favourites to win the next election. Starmer leads Sunak on nearly every important electoral issue, including the pivotal question of who would make the best prime minister.

Yet despite this strong performance in the polls, questions remain over the Labour leader’s appeal to the electorate and his ability to generate the type of swing not seen since 1997.

Our focus group shows a despondent public…

Unlike ‘97, the next election will be fought against a bleak economic backdrop, with voters struggling to keep up with inflation, interest rate rises, a possible recession, and failing public services.

Indeed, the members of the public that we spoke to for our latest J.L.Partners/Times Radio focus group of undecided voters were certainly fatalistic about the country’s prospects, and did not hold back in their criticism of the Conservatives.

One after another, participants complained about the party’s “mismanagement” of the country. One said, “everything is just a farce all the time”; and another, “I don’t have that much respect for them or what they say, it’s just disappointment really.”

Last year’s Partygate scandal scarred the Conservative brand, and its recent reappearance in newspaper headlines reopened old wounds. “There is no trust there” complained one woman, “they should set an example and they don’t.”

If these sorts of comments are anything to go by, any chance for the Conservatives to win an unprecedented fifth term seems vanishingly small. However, these members of the public weren’t so much angry as despondent.

There was a deep-rooted apathy about the country’s future, and any elected politician’s ability to dramatically improve it. As one participant put it, “I don’t see how anyone could do better.”

…But Sunak out-polls the Tories, and his pledges are starting to cut through

The good news for the prime minister is that, as polls suggest, these members of the public felt more positively about him than they did the Conservatives overall. The less good news is that even though they see him as the “best of a bad bunch” and say he was “made prime minister at a difficult time,” they “feel sorry for him” more than they believe in him.

Internal party struggles and a worsening economic outlook have undermined Sunak’s claims to technocratic competence. His ‘five pledges’ have had more cut through compared to a month ago, but this focus group was universally sceptical that he would be able to deliver any of them.

Unable to point to any tangible progress he now comes across to these voters as “unrealistic” and “challenged”; a “middle manager” who is out of his depth relative to the sheer scale of challenges the country is facing.

Voters think Starmer is ‘new’, ‘fresh’, ‘hopeful’ and ‘relevant’…

RED BOX PODCAST

Times Radio Focus Group

Pretty bleak for Tories (“no faith”) but hardly Beatlemania for Starmer (“new” “I don’t know who he is”)

Anger at Tories has become despondency. Hard to get that back.

🎧LISTEN https://t.co/2JVOd6gM7y

pic.twitter.com/T4Yx3qL1oU

— Matt Chorley (@MattChorley) June 27, 2023

Politics can be a zero-sum game, and a bad few weeks for Sunak inevitably means a good few weeks for Starmer. Labour strategists would certainly be pleased by descriptions of him as “new” “fresh” and “hopeful” and someone who, compared to Sunak, “talks about things more relevant to me.”

When prompted to imagine newspaper headlines six months into a Starmer premiership, one hopefully suggested ‘NHS waiting lists going down’ with another adding, “Things eventually looking up for Great Britain.”

…but they know little about Starmer, his values or his policies

Nevertheless, the voters we spoke to for this group still do not really know who Keir Starmer is or what he stands for, let alone what he will do on getting the keys to No 10. As one woman said “I don’t really know much about him so I can’t say anything bad.” Between them, they could not name a single Labour policy, “the whole problem is they don’t say what they’re going to do.”

Despite this, most said they would vote Labour anyway, the desire for change outweighing any question marks over Starmer and his party. “The way things are at the moment, could they get any worse? I’m willing to give anyone a chance.”

The public are so weary of the recent political and economic turmoil that even though Starmer is no Blair, he may still manage to pull off as big an electoral swing as the latter achieved in 1997.

The fact that the Labour leader is currently met with little more than a collective shrug may mean he has further potential to solidify and expand his support as voters learn more about him and his plans for office, but it seems the time is nigh to clarify who he is.

It’s almost as if an accidental revolution is propelling Starmer to No 10. Voters have no great enthusiasm for him but will likely wake up to a Labour victory in the absence of anything else better. Starmer will need the policies and vision to match and not simply become an accidental prime minister too.