Doomsday poll for Labour has them in a distant third place on just 22% of the vote - and Rachel Reeves is almost as unpopular as Donald Trump

Regular readers will recall the oddity of the monthly Freshwater Strategy / City AM series of voting intentions polls, which are almost invisible - even City AM themselves don't always seem to report the results.  However, the latest poll is such a horror show for Labour that I thought it would be remiss of me not to dig it out.

GB-wide voting intentions (Freshwater Strategy / City AM):

Reform UK 28%
Conservatives 27%
Labour 22%
Liberal Democrats 14%
Greens 5%
SNP 2%

Until very recently, 22% would have equalled Labour's post-election low, but More In Common have recently reported a new record of 21%.  But 22% is still an abysmal figure, and given that it puts Labour six points behind Reform *and* five points behind the Tories, there's a case to be made that this is the worst poll for Starmer so far.

I've gone through the records to see how Labour's current predicament compares with how the party performed under Jeremy Corbyn.  The lowest Labour vote share I can find during the Corbyn tenure was 18%, which may well also be the record low for Labour since the Second World War - I'm not aware of comprehensive records being available anywhere, but I can't think of any other period since 1945 (including even the early 1980s) when it's remotely likely Labour would have dropped so low.  Even under Corbyn, only a tiny percentage of polls had Labour sub-20, but nevertheless it did happen occasionally, so technically Starmer can still claim to be not quite as unpopular as Corbyn was at his absolute lowest points - but the way things are going, he may not be able to make that claim for very much longer.

There are net approval ratings for leading public figures, and both Starmer (-39) and Rachel Reeves (-43) are very nearly as unpopular as Donald Trump (-44).  What will be even more alarming for Starmer is that on the head-to-head question about whether he or Kemi Badenoch would make the best Prime Minister, Badenoch is the clear winner by a margin of 40% to 32%.  That's the question that is often considered more predictive of election results than even headline voting intention numbers.  I'm very surprised to see Badenoch ahead, because the public's reaction to her has been tepid, so it must be assumed she's only ahead by default because Starmer is so loathed.

One of the reasons these Freshwater polls are going largely unnoticed is that they do not appear in Wikipedia's list of polls.  There's a very confusing discussion on the Wikipedia Talk page about the rationale for excluding Freshwater - it basically boils down to the fact that Freshwater are not members of the British Polling Council, but the Wikipedia users can't even agree with each other about what they had previously agreed their policy should be on non-BPC polling firms.  I'd have to say those who are claiming that it was previously agreed to include non-BPC polls must be correct, because Lord Ashcroft polls have appeared on the list for years, and Ashcroft isn't a BPC member.

One user claimed that if they included non-BPC polls, they'd soon find themselves including self-selecting Twitter polls, which is a piece of absolutely hysterical hyperbole.  There are about a billion increments between a BPC poll and a self-selecting online poll.

*  *  *

I launched the Scot Goes Pop fundraiser for 2025 in January, and so far the running total stands at £1830, meaning that 27% of the target of £6800 has been raised.  If you'd like to help Scot Goes Pop continue with poll analysis and truly independent political commentary for another year, donations are welcome HERE.  Direct Paypal donations can also be made - my Paypal email address is:   jkellysta@yahoo.co.uk