A week ago, when Starmer was asked about the best moment in his first year of government, he answered, “walking into Downing Street”.
He’s actually on to something, because in polling terms, it has been downhill ever since he crossed the threshold at No. 10.
Since Starmer took office, Labour’s polling average has decreased by 12 points, from 34 per cent to 22 per cent, and Starmer’s own favourability has plummeted. Even Labour loyalists have had enough: half now say the government is moving too slowly to deliver the change it promised.
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The frustration runs so deep that most Britons reckon they could do a better job. Fifty-three say that if they’d held the keys to No. 10 for a year, they would have been able to stop the record small-boat crossings that have surged on Starmer’s watch.
And even on a metric Downing Street boasts about—trimming NHS waiting lists—voters are unimpressed. They believe they would have been able to similarly cut those lists.
Starmer's symbolic side quests while Rome burns is paving the way for an electoral bloodbath - Emma Schubart | Getty Images
So why has the public turned against Labour so strongly? Because Starmer keeps chasing symbolic side-quests while ducking the crises that actually keep voters up at night, namely immigration, the NHS, and the cost of living.
A Merlin Strategy poll finds only half of Labour voters think the government is tackling issues that matter to them, while 52 per cent say headline-grabbing policies like a smoking ban are crowding out real priorities.
And Labour voters are fed up with Starmer’s smoking-ban fixation anyway. In a focus group of Labour 2024 voters from Runcorn, one frustrated voter asked: “How is that [the smoking ban] really relatable to the working person? It’s just something shiny to put in the media”.
Other participants emphasised that smoking “is not a priority” for voters, and that “smoking is [already] a settled issue”.
And they’re right. Smoking rates have already dropped — from around 25 per cent of adults in 2006 to 17 per cent in 2024—so why waste political capital on a “problem” that’s largely solved? It smacks of vanity politics while Britain’s genuine problems continue to fester.
Indeed, voters’ outlooks are bleak. The Adam Smith Institute recently found that two-thirds of 18-30 year olds believe that securing affordable housing will continue to become more difficult, including 65 per cent of Labour voters, and half of these young people are struggling financially.
In fact, over a quarter of them say they are planning on or seriously considering throwing in the towel and leaving the country altogether. That’s an astonishing level of anxiety in the governing party’s own base, yet No. 10 chooses to police e-cigarettes.
Starmer finds the time, though, to call “emergency” meetings to recognise a Palestinian state and boasts about setting up a football regulator. These unserious distractions explain why the public’s verdict on Labour’s biggest achievement is “nothing”.
So why isn’t Starmer addressing what voters are loudly telling him are their biggest concerns? Is he incapable? Is he oblivious? Whatever the reason, it’s no surprise that former Labour voters are turning to Reform, which has already captured former Labour strongholds in local elections. The more Starmer flits from one vanity project to another, the easier he makes Nigel Farage’s job.
It seems that Starmer has forgotten why people voted for change in 2024. It certainly wasn’t for paternalistic pet projects. It was to fix what’s broken in this country: homes, jobs, bills, and borders.
Voters want a relentless focus on these bread-and-butter issues, not a legislative crusade against cigarettes for people who aren’t even born yet.
Until Starmer proves he can deliver on these fundamentals, his moralistic meddling with smoking and other niche issues will just look like fiddling while Rome burns.