Keir Starmer has closed the gap – but Boris Johnson is still preferred as prime minister

Many Labour supporters and some commentators say that Keir Starmer’s opinion poll ratings are disappointing. What they usually mean is that they dislike Boris Johnson and think that he has handled the coronavirus badly, and as a result believe that Labour ought to be miles ahead in the polls by now.

In fact, the polls suggest that enough people think the government has handled the crisis well to keep the Conservatives afloat, and an overwhelming majority think the government has done well on vaccines.

What has happened in the past few weeks, then, is that the prime minister and the Conservative Party have received a modest boost in the polls thanks to the vaccines, and this has little to do with what people think of the Labour leader.

To try to separate views of Starmer from those of his relative merits compared with Johnson, therefore, we have to look at poll questions that ask about the Labour leader in isolation. Asked, for example, whether people have a “favourable” opinion of him or an “unfavourable” one, Starmer has generally scored much better than Jeremy Corbyn, and better than Ed Miliband, although not as well as David Cameron and certainly not as well as Tony Blair when they were leaders of the opposition.

When Starmer took over as Labour leader he started with a net “favourable” rating of +5, whereas Corbyn had been on -48, according to Ipsos Mori. Starmer’s rating rose to +10 in June before falling back and last month it was -1. More recent figures from other polling companies this month range from YouGov -6 and ComRes -4 to Survation +3.

More detailed polling gives Starmer positive ratings on being “strong”, “likeable”, “decisive” and “competent” (42 per cent see him as competent, according to YouGov last month and only 21 per cent incompetent).

These are all good ratings for a leading politician, but of course Starmer’s performance cannot easily be separated from people’s perceptions of the government and of the prime minister. Johnson’s favourability rating has been rather more variable than Starmer’s. Before coronavirus struck, Boris Johnson had a -13 rating, but during the first wave and especially after he was in hospital with the illness himself, the public rallied to him and he went up to +20. Since then, he has drifted back into “unfavourable” territory, -18 with Ipsos Mori last month, and from -2 with ComRes and -3 with Survation to -15 with YouGov this month.

These numbers seem surprisingly variable between the polling companies, although overall Starmer is viewed more favourably than Johnson. On the other hand, when voters are asked to choose between them, as to which would make the better prime minister, Johnson has recently taken the lead.

When voters were first asked to choose between them, Johnson was ahead, although he had just come out of hospital. Starmer reached rough parity in June and then was usually ahead from August, although again there is a wide difference between polling companies. In the latest polling carried out this month, Johnson is two points ahead with YouGov and five points ahead with Opinium, but 16 points ahead with Survation and ComRes.

As Anthony Wells, director of political research at YouGov, comments: “It is clear from the polling that Keir Starmer is seen by the general public as much more of a competent, plausible prime ministerial figure than his two predecessors.” He has recently appeared to stall, not because of anything he has or has not done but because Johnson and the Tory party have benefited from the success of the vaccination programme. But Starmer’s Labour critics ought to be grateful to him for making their party a serious contender for government again.

Thanks to David Cowling for compiling the opinion poll findings on which this article is based