Revealed: More voters say Labour doing bad job delivering missions than good

More people believe Labour is doing a bad job than a good job at delivering each of its five missions, according to polling exclusive to LabourList.

Keir Starmer’s five missions cover economic growth, clean energy, safe streets, inequality of opportunity, and the NHS. They are the tent poles of any progressive government. Yet across the board, the public believe Labour are failing to deliver them.

Since September, public optimism about Labour’s current and predicted future performance has declined across all five of its missions, according to polling by Ipsos.

In the latest polling, shared exclusively with LabourList, the number of people who believe Labour is doing a bad job on “kickstarting economic growth” has risen from 43% to 49%.

The other four missions tell similar stories.

Public optimism about making Britain a clean energy superpower has declined, with 44% now believing that Labour is doing a bad job.

While 46% and 44% of the public now believe Labour is doing a bad job at taking back our streets and breaking down barriers to opportunity respectively.

The one mission with the lowest pessimism rate, with 26% answering that Labour is doing a good job, is building an NHS fit for the future. But even then, 46% believe Labour is doing a bad job at that as well.

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Worryingly, for Starmer, the public are also pessimistic about Labour’s ability to deliver on its five missions before the next general election. They’re not just unhappy about the government’s current performance, they’re also sceptical about the direction of travel.

Building an NHS fit for the future fares best, with 27% of the public believing that the Labour government will do a good job at delivering it by the next election. This is also a top priority for the public, chosen by 62% of respondents.

Analysing the results, Gideon Skinner, Senior Director of UK Politics at Ipsos, said they highlighted a “persistent challenge” for the Labour government.

“There’s a clear and growing sense of pessimism about Labour’s capacity to deliver on its promises, not only in the present but also looking ahead to the next election.

“Even on the NHS, the public’s top priority and where there have been some signs of recent improvements on waiting lists, pessimism still outweighs optimism.”

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He said voter negativity is “particularly pronounced” when it comes to the economy, where public confidence is currently at “historic lows”.

“The public have been feeling unhappy with the state of the country for a long time, even before Labour came to power, which means they are impatient to start seeing tangible improvements to their daily lives – and the local elections have shown that Labour will be held to account if it doesn’t deliver these”

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