Is Sir Keir Starmer the ‘most unpopular’ PM in recent times?

Over the last few days, amid political turmoil in Westminster, we’ve seen several claims about the popularity of the Prime Minister, with some suggesting it is at historic lows.

Last weekend, the Times referred to Sir Keir Starmer as “the most unpopular prime minister in history”, while Andrew Neil wrote in the Daily Mail that Mr Starmer is “the most unpopular Prime Minister with voters since modern polling began”.

Meanwhile a viral social post which asked if Mr Starmer is the “most disliked Prime Minister in living memory” was challenged on X by a senior pollster at the research company YouGov.

There’s no one way of measuring prime ministerial popularity, but we’ve taken a look here at what some recent polls have said about Mr Starmer’s satisfaction, favourability and approval ratings, and how they compare with previous PMs’ ratings.

While some data from Ipsos does record Mr Starmer as having the lowest satisfaction level of any PM since it started asking the question in the 1970s, some other polls suggest fewer people approved of or favoured Liz Truss.

It’s worth noting that the polls we reference below ask different questions. As such, they’re not necessarily measuring exactly the same thing, and they often cover different time periods too. And while at least one claim we’ve seen suggested Mr Starmer is the most unpopular PM “in history”, we’ve stuck here to looking at recent comparable data.

How is the popularity of the PM measured?

When we asked polling expert Sir John Curtice about the different ways of measuring the popularity of a PM, he told us it “depends a bit on what you want to measure—perceived performance or likeability” and that these are “not necessarily the same thing”.

One measure that some of the claims we’ve seen appear to be based on is ‘satisfaction ratings’, as polled by market research firm Ipsos.

Last September Gideon Skinner, senior director of UK politics at Ipsos, said that Mr Starmer’s “personal satisfaction ratings are the worst for any Prime Minister polled by Ipsos since we first started asking the question in 1977”.

This was based on Ipsos polling which had found 13% of voters in September said they were satisfied with Mr Starmer. In the November edition of Ipsos’ ‘Political Monitor’, 13% were again satisfied with Mr Starmer.

Earlier this month, Ipsos reported Mr Starmer’s satisfaction rating had improved slightly in January, and was at 15%, though a 77% dissatisfaction rating meant overall Mr Starmer’s net satisfaction score was -62. Mr Skinner said satisfaction with the Prime Minister “remains historically low”.

Our analysis of the Ipsos data suggests that on all three ways of examining the figures—satisfaction, dissatisfaction and net satisfaction—Mr Starmer’s scores at some points in recent months have been lower than other PMs since 1977.

There are a number of other polls to look at, however, which give a mixed picture. Some suggest Mr Starmer’s polling may not be the worst for a PM and Liz Truss fared worse.

Here’s a rundown of some of the other data we’ve found:

• YouGov asks people if they have a favourable or unfavourable opinion of the PM. In January, 18% said they had a favourable opinion of Mr Starmer and 75% did not, leading to a net favourability rating of -57 for the PM. This is not a recent record though. In early October 2022, Ms Truss received a net favourability score of -59, and this fell to -70 by the middle of the month.
  
  YouGov’s most recent results on this measure came out this week, after the claims we’ve mentioned above were made, and showed a slight improvement for Mr Starmer, with a new net favourability score of -47.
• Opinium measures net approval of the PM. Last week, it found Mr Starmer’s net approval was -44, after asking people “To what extent do you approve or disapprove of… the way Keir Starmer is handling his job as Prime Minister”. In October 2022, Ms Truss’s net approval was -47. Last month Opinium polling put Mr Starmer’s net approval at -46, the same score as Theresa May in May 2019.
• YouGov also tracks public opinion as to how “well” a PM is doing. As of 26 January, 71% of people polled in this way said Mr Starmer was doing “badly”, and 19% thought he was doing “well”. Ms Truss also recorded a ‘badly’ score of 71%, while Mr Sunak recorded 72% and Boris Johnson 73%. However in December 2025 Mr Starmer’s ‘badly’ score was 76%, the highest of the four most recent PMs.
  
  From the data we were able to check for recent PMs, Ms Truss has the lowest proportion of people who thought she was doing ‘well’ at 11%, while Mr Starmer’s lowest score in this category is, so far, 15%.
• YouGov also publishes ‘popularity’ scores of public figures, which it says is the percentage of people “who have a positive opinion on a topic”. It says Mr Starmer’s ‘popularity’ via this measure is 18%, which is higher than that of Ms Truss at 13%—though as these two figures both measure current popularity they don’t allow us to compare popularity at the time each was PM.
• Ipsos asks people if they “like” or “do not like” the party leaders, with data going back to 2007. (The full question is “Which of these statements come closest to your views of … and the … party?”) This month, 70% said they did not like Mr Starmer, and 20% said they did. Ipsos said his net score of -50 is the lowest of a PM since 2007. Boris Johnson received a net score of -40, the lowest of a Conservative leader in that time.
• YouGov monitors ‘likeability’, though we could only find results for three of the four most recent PMs—not Liz Truss. Its latest such poll was on 2 February, and found 59% thought Mr Starmer was ‘dislikeable’ and 21% ‘likeable’. In December, 62% thought Mr Starmer was dislikable, his highest score, while his lowest likeable score came in October when 19% thought he was likeable.
  
  Mr Starmer’s current score of 59% dislikeable matches the final score of Mr Sunak in June 2024, though Mr Sunak’s lowest likeable score was 26%. Mr Johnson’s dislikeability score did not rise as high as Mr Starmer’s, and his likeability score did not drop as low.

It’s worth noting that the majority of the recent polls which we’ve mentioned above relating to Mr Starmer were conducted prior to the Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar calling on Monday for Mr Starmer to resign.

Do people think Mr Starmer should resign?

On 10 February, 48% of those polled by YouGov thought that Mr Starmer should stand down and be replaced by a new Labour leader and PM (in November this was 51%). Neither of these scores are a record in recent times—in August 2022 66% of respondents thought Mr Johnson should resign and in September 2022 51% said the same of Ms Truss.

Opinium polling last week found 55% thought Mr Starmer should resign, which is lower than the 67% who thought Mr Johnson should resign in August 2022.