Sir Keir Starmer has been warned to “change course” after new polling showed that more than half of Britons see the Prime Minister unfavourably.
A new poll by public policy research agency Public First, conducted for The Telegraph, showed that 53 per cent of voters hold an unfavourable view of Starmer, while 26 per cent view him favourably.
Speaking to GB News, commentator Tom Jones said that following Starmer’s most recent U-turn on welfare reforms, it appears the Prime Minister doesn’t have “any principles that he sticks to”.
Jones explained: “You have to look at his history and say frankly, no he doesn’t stick to principles. And and were it not for laughing, I should pity him.
Tom Jones has told Keir Starmer to ‘change course’ after new polling sends population plummeting
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“I think he’s on his third climbdown next week. He’s had a year in office, he’s climbed down on the rape gangs inquiry, he’s now climbed down on welfare as well. And he also U-turned on the cuts to Winter Fuel Allowance.”
Citing the polling results, Jones stated that the only other Prime Minister to have an equally unfavourable view from voters at this point in their leadership is Gordon Brown.
Jones added: “This just seems to confirm the growing sense that Starmer’s Government is really vulnerable to pressure and can’t really deliver anything that it’s trying to do, that it’s setting out to do.
“And so, understandably, I think of all the Prime Ministers since Thatcher, this polling today shows that only Gordon Brown had a worse net approval rating at the same stage of their premiership now.”
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A new poll has revealed that more than 50 per cent of Britons have an unfavourable view of Keir Starmer
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Running through Starmer’s failure to tackle some of Britain’s biggest issues, Jones told GB News: “Let’s run through the greatest hits so far – failure to deal quickly with the riots and the two-tier policing system, huge trade union pay deals, then trying to blame the Tories for the £22billion black hole.
“Prisoner release, often quite violent criminals that they lied to the public about who they were releasing, winter fuel U-turns, the rape gang refusal, and then the U-turn, and now the welfare benefit U-turn as well. So, really, you can’t blame the public for not liking this guy.”
Reflecting on the U-turns, Jones stated: “Every time he says something, the public just don’t believe he’s going to believe it next week. This is the problem now.”
As host Dawn Neesom argued that Labour has achieved a decrease in NHS waiting lists, Jones agreed that it is most likely the “one issue” that Starmer has won public approval on.
Jones told GB News that Rachel Reeves could be ‘gone within a year’
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Jones said: “That’s one of the few areas that he’s won public approval on, but the fact is it’s just not enough, because at the same time, the migration situation is getting a lot worse, and he’s having all these very public failures.
“So the fact that he’s succeeding in one area, the NHS, even though the NHS is very important to the electorate, it’s just not enough to shift the needle.”
Offering a solution to Starmer, Jones concluded: “Frankly, he has to change course completely. They are doing lots of technocratic reforms on migration around the edges instead of actually tackling the pull factors, the overly generous welfare settlement, the overly generous asylum acceptance rates that are bringing people here in the first place. So they’ve got to tackle that instead of handing the French more money.
“Frankly, I think Rachel Reeves will probably go before the next election. She might even go within a year because the economic strategy is simply not working, there’s way too much tax. There’s too much tax on employment, there’s too much tax on employers, and it is stifling the economy.”