‘The Tories are incompetent failures. And everyone knows it’

No matter how many times you ask the same question in a focus group, something similar comes back. Not identical every time, but the gist is there.

The exchange goes something like this:

Me: “Why are you planning to change your vote from Conservative in 2019 to Labour next time?”

Generic participant: “We need a change. Nothing can be as bad as this lot. They can’t seem to do anything to fix the country.”

And so it goes, time after time.

It doesn’t matter what policy area you interrogate: it’s the failure to actually achieve anything that is driving voters away from the government and towards Labour.

Normal people might not follow the minutiae – but they’re sick of the Tories

Normal people don’t look at Rishi Sunak’s reversals on HS2 and net zero and analyse the decisions for their policy wisdom. They are simply seen as two more examples of the Conservatives saying they are going to do something and then backtracking on it. It’s a broken government that breaks its promises to fix broken Britain.

This is now being reflected in the polls. Findings released earlier this week by Redfield and Wilton Strategies, a pollster, found that Keir Starmer has a lead over Sunak on all 17 categories of leadership including “knows how to get things done” and “will build a better economy”.

There are similar findings in a key area for the government, improving the cost and availability of childcare, which was a centrepiece of the Spring Budget.

On the eve of the autumn statement, findings from a YouGov poll this week will have made for bleak reading in Sunak’s No 10. The survey, which was carried out for the Early Education and Childcare Coalition, found that just 7% of British voters trust the Conservatives to reduce the cost of childcare – while 35% trust Labour. They are sceptical in the extreme that the government will deliver on their promises – and who can blame them?

But it’s hard to find enthusiasm for Starmer

This is despite the fact that it is – I’m sorry to say – hard to find a huge amount of enthusiasm in focus groups for Starmer. The accusation that he flip flops on policy is still something that comes up.

So too is a sense that he is an out-of-touch, overly ambitious lawyer. Despite concerted and repeated efforts to get his back story out there, it’s still widely believed that he is posh. That knighthood is proving to be something of an albatross.

But there is good news too. Attitudes in focus groups reflect the Redfield findings – voters do hope that the Labour team will be more reliable, trustworthy and motivated to “get stuff done”.

There is evidence of cut-through – but more needs to be done

Positively, this is evidently the way Starmer and his people are beginning to articulate their vision. Competence and commitment are two undervalued traits that stand in direct contrast to several years of Conservative chaos – and the public are beginning to appreciate them.

Starmer’s speech in Liverpool last month that talked about the need to rebuild the country and talked in reasonably long-term ways about a ‘decade of renewal’ pressed some of these sweet spots and went down well with the voters who were paying attention.

Labour will need to convince in the short campaign

As we get ever nearer to what electoral strategists call the “short campaign” (essentially the run into actual polling day), voters will start paying attention and will hear more and more of this.

What both the polling and focus groups tell us is that they desperately want stability from Westminster and a grown-up party running the country.

It is, I now feel confident, impossible for the Conservatives to reverse the perception of incompetence. It is excellent news that Labour and Starmer are offering the exact opposite: a competent government with a long-term plan that it intends to deliver.