British voters have fallen out of love with the Conservative Party – and hopes that Rishi Sunak might persuade them otherwise are fading fast. On almost any measure, the Conservatives have fallen behind Labour. And while the Leader of the Opposition, Keir Starmer, may not be that popular, he is generally seen as a better bet than Sunak. According to Savanta, back in November 2022 some 38% of the public believed that Sunak would make the better prime minister, compared to 35% who said the same about Starmer. A year later Sunak’s score had dropped by six points to 32%, while Starmer’s had risen by the same amount to 41%.

The last general election delivered a comfortable 11.5point win for the Conservatives, giving Boris Johnson a substantial Commons majority. Now, however, average headline voting intention figures put Labour ahead by between 15 and 20 percentage points. Yet it wasn’t immediately downhill from that election. Indeed, the Conservatives widened their lead in the early weeks of the pandemic in 2020, only to see it shrink to virtually zero in the chaos that followed and then bounce back to around ten points with the vaccine roll-out in the New Year of 2021.

By the late autumn of 2021, however, Labour had drawn level, and the Conservatives have been in trouble ever since. The Partygate revelations and atmosphere of crisis around Number Ten were bad enough. But the premiership of Liz Truss proved even more disastrous, widening what had been a Labour lead of around 10% to an incredible 30 points in a few short weeks.

True, Truss’ replacement by Sunak saw a recovery from the nadir, with the gap between the parties halving in the spring of 2023 to some 15 points. However, since then, any recovery has stalled, with Politico’s latest poll of polls putting Labour on 46% and the Conservatives on 26%.

This should come as no surprise in view of the economic difficulties facing the country and the state of public services, particularly the NHS. It also chimes with Sunak’s own poll ratings. He became PM on 25 October 2022 with an average net prime ministerial approval rating of +4, which briefly rose to +8. Since then, however, his ratings have declined, and since January 2023 have essentially flatlined for months, with approval running at under 40 % and disapproval over 60%.

Even this may flatter to deceive. On a different measure – namely when voters are asked whether they have a favourable or unfavourable view of a politician or a party – Sunak’s rating fell to a new low of minus 41% at the end of August 2023, even though the Conservatives ‘recovered’ slightly to -48. A mere 8% said they had a favourable view of Sunak but an unfavourable view of the Conservatives – not many more than the 5% who said the opposite – suggesting Sunak is no longer much of an asset. Some 60% of those asked had an unfavourable view of both leader and party. This compares with the 45% who said the same of Starmer’s Labour.

While Labour’s rating is hardly stellar, it can take some comfort not only from Conservative scores but also from some polling which suggests that voters see Starmer and Labour as ideologically closer to them than Sunak and the Conservatives. Asked to place themselves on a left-right scale running from zero to ten, the (mean) average self-placement was 4.6, with Starmer placed at 3.9 and Labour at 3.3. However, voters placed the Conservatives further away at 7.6 and Sunak at 7.3.

The Conservatives have also fallen behind Labour when it comes to handling the issues voters name as priorities – most worryingly, on handling the economy, where, according to YouGov polling over the summer, only one in five people thought they were the best party compared to one in four who named Labour. Eight out of ten voters thought the government was handling the economy badly.

The same was true of the NHS, where the Conservatives trailed Labour by 12 points to 40 as best party, and of immigration – long seen by Conservative MPs as one of their electoral trump cards – where the party trailed Labour by 17 to 22 points. Indeed, practically the only good news for the Conservatives was that they continued to outperform Labour as the best party to handle Brexit. Yet even there the gap between the two parties was a mere four points, and with two-thirds of voters saying the government was handling that issue badly.

It will come as no surprise if numbers like these provoke further disquiet in Conservative ranks over the coming months. Such division itself, however, risks doing further damage – some 66 % of voters were telling YouGov in mid-August 2023 that they thought the Conservatives were divided, compared to just 35% who thought the same of Labour.

Whether or not ‘divided parties lose elections’, it is almost certainly the case that governments that look exhausted and no longer in control of events are in severe danger. Unfortunately for the Conservatives, voters seem to have made up their minds: 84% of voters told YouGov in mid-August that they thought the government looked ‘tired’ and 88% reckoned it was led by, rather than leading, events.

By the beginning of September 75% of people told pollsters More in Common that it was time for a change of government – a figure that included a striking 47% of those who voted Conservative in 2019. Two devastating by-election losses to Labour towards the end of October suggested such polls painted an accurate picture of public opinion.

As the general election draws nearer, then, there may be little Sunak and his colleagues can do other than to focus on his five priorities and hope that something will turn up. Stranger things have happened, of course – but not as often as he would like.

Originally published at https://ukandeu.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/UKICE-The-State-of-Public-Opinion-2023-2-.pdf