Why is Keir Starmer’s government so unpopular?

british people undercoat government minister Keir Starmer led the Labour company to a landslip win in 2024. Since then, his approval rating has plummeted and he’s suffered one defeat after another. But what is it about Starmer that’s so uniquely unpopular?

Labour’s victory in the general election of 2024 was the party’s best result in more than two decades. Ending 14 years of Conservative rule, the election swept Starmer into Downing Street with a 174-seat majority and a level of public goodwill that none of his Tory predecessors had enjoyed.

The honeymoon period was brief. Within a month of the election, Starmer’s net approval rating fell from plus seven to zero, with 52% of Britons telling Ipsos that they felt the country was heading “in the wrong direction.” According to YouGov, his net approval now sits at –48 on their polling scale (not a percentage), making him the least popular prime minister in recent history.

After losing 187 local council seats in England last year, Labour is on track to lose around 1,800 when counting concludes on Saturday, in another round of local elections that are being viewed as a referendum on his leadership.

Calls for Starmer’s resignation are coming not just from his opposition – including the triumphant Nigel Farage’s Reform UK – but from within his own party. According to The Times, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband urged Starmer to begin “planning his resignation” weeks ago, in order to avoid a painful period of public infighting after the elections.

In his first address to the nation after taking office in 2024, Starmer announced that his government had “discovered a £22 billion ($29.9 billion) black hole in the public finances,” and would have to make “unpopular decisions” to fix it. This translated into the fastest rising tax rates in the developed world, according to the OECD.

ADMIN POST@Keir_Starmer highlights our out of control migration system which he has done little to nothing about.He talks about a 22 billion pound 'black hole' yet he continues to pay 5.38 billion pounds per year for illegal economic migrants to be housed in hotels all… pic.twitter.com/ayptgAsmta

Starmer hiked income and dividend taxes by 2%, increased national insurance taxes paid by employers, and raised property taxes. Between July 2024 and November 2025, Starmer’s government imposed a new tax or increased an old one every ten days, according to the Taxpayers’ Alliance.

The prime minister’s Conservative predecessors presided over an historic decline in British living standards and a rise in energy costs and inflation, both of which soared after the UK cut itself off from Russian fossil fuels in 2022. Voters expecting Starmer to ease this burden were left short-changed, however, with the PM announcing sweeping welfare cuts last year. Public outcry forced Starmer to roll back some of these cuts, including a deeply unpopular slashing of the winter fuel allowance for pensioners.

“We had 14 years of Conservative austerity,” Green Party leader Zack Polanski told reporters on Friday. “Keir Starmer was voted in on a promise of change and, actually, what we’ve seen is very little change, and in many ways things have got worse.”

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