The Labour leader is only polling ahead of Liz Truss in a list of recent prime ministers. Sir Keir Starmer’s popularity as prime minister has tanked to below the level of Boris Johnson, in a damning new poll from YouGov. The Labour leader is only ahead of Liz Truss in a list of recent prime ministers and is lagging far behind David Cameron, Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher. After seven months in power, nearly half of Britons (45 per cent) now say that Mr Blair did a better job as prime minister than Sir Keir, according to the poll.
![[Nearly half of Britons (45%) say that Blair was a better prime minister than Starmer]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/02/19/10/00/GkJFxBlXQAArzCB.jpeg)
Voters also favour Gordon Brown’s tenure in Downing Street over Starmer’s by a margin of 42 per cent to 12 per cent. The Iron Lady is the Conservative prime minister judged to have performed better than Sir Keir by the largest margin, with 44 per cent of Britons seeing her premiership as better than Starmer’s. Boris Johnson, who was embroiled in the Partygate scandal during the Covid pandemic, is also shading Sir Keir in the polling by 3 per cent.
![[Boris Johnson was marginally more popular as PM despite Partygate]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/04/15/d061c066bde6bac2a47b50a39afbda34Y29udGVudHNlYXJjaGFwaSwxNzMzNDExMjIz-2.66815782.jpg)
It comes after voters branded Sir Keir’s government “incompetent” and “dishonest”, according to another dire YouGov poll for Labour taken in January. Labour has struggled since its landslide election victory in July, dogged by issues including a “freebies” scandal, the farmer protests and the backlash to Rachel Reeves’s Budget. But in welcome news for Sir Keir his opposite number Kemi Badenoch is falling further behind Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
![[Liz Truss is the only PM in recent history who was more unpopular than Sir Keir]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/24/14/newFile-3.jpg)
But the poor poll showing for Ms Badenoch came as she dismayed many on her own benches in recent weeks, who are frustrated at her performances at PMQs. Recently the former Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson suggested that she had just 18 months to turn things around or she would face the same outcome as many Conservative leaders in recent months – and be ousted from the top job by her own party. Sir Keir Starmer, who will visit Washington next week, has urged America to provide a “backstop” to any settlement brokered between Kyiv and Moscow.
