Labour slump to new post-election low of 23%, and a dismal third place, in new More In Common poll

GB-wide voting intentions (More In Common, 21st-24th February 2025):

Conservatives 25% (+2)

Reform UK 24% (-2)

Labour 23% (-2)

Liberal Democrats 16% (+4)

Greens 8% (+1)

SNP 3% (-)

23% is the lowest figure for Labour in a More In Common poll since the general election, and is only 1% above the lowest post-election figure for Labour across all polling firms.  And Starmer ought to be far more concerned by that vote share than by being in third place.  Paradoxically, third place is almost a boon for him because it's a by-product of the right-wing vote being split down the middle, which is actually keeping Labour in contention.  But even though that split has persisted for months now, I still struggle to imagine it continuing for four more years until the next general election.  One way or another, the right-wing vote will consolidate, meaning that unless Labour's own vote recovers radically, they will suffer a record-breaking defeat that will make them nostalgic for 1983 and 2019.

Interestingly, More In Common agrees with the new YouGov poll in that it shows Reform UK dipping by a couple of percentage points and the Tories recovering a bit. That could be the start of a new trend, or it could just be margin of error noise replicated by two different pollsters by pure coincidence.

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I said yesterday that Labour's cynicism in cutting the overseas aid budget to spend more on the military was a reflection of the new Trumpian post-morality transactional world, but I'm slightly stunned at how little attempt they're making to hide that fact.  When criticised for the aid cuts, the Defence Secretary John Healey said that "hard power" was more important than "soft power" - as if he couldn't even imagine anyone thinking that humanitarian funding could possibly have any purpose or value other than as a projection of British power.  The idea that rich countries have a moral obligation to assist the world's poorest would, it seems, be entirely alien to him.

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