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More than half of Britons disapprove of the new Labour government, polling showed on Wednesday, as a separate survey revealed many more voters expect to be hit with higher personal taxes than before the general election in July.
The share of UK adults who have a negative view of Sir Keir Starmer’s government has surged by about 20 percentage points in a month to 51 per cent, YouGov said, with the proportion of people who approve of it falling from 29 per cent to 23 per cent.
Separately Ipsos polling for the Financial Times showed three-quarters of the UK public think chancellor Rachel Reeves will increase the taxes they pay personally, up from just over half in May.
Since winning the election on July 4, the prime minister has had to grapple with riots following the mass stabbing in Southport, faced allegations of cronyism and paved the way for tax rises this autumn.
Starmer has argued he inherited a dire financial legacy from the Conservatives and in a set-piece speech on Tuesday blamed the violent disorder over the summer on 14 years of Tory “rot” in British society.
He also warned the public that things would get “worse before they get better” and served notice of a “painful” Budget on October 30, in his strongest signal yet that taxes will go up.
The YouGov survey came as a poll by think-tank More in Common conducted between August 24 and August 27 found Starmer’s approval rating had fallen to -16, the lowest score the think-tank has ever recorded for the Labour leader.
The fall from +6 earlier this month, when Starmer received a bounce from his response to the riots, came after the government faced questions over its handling of appointments after a party donor and several other Labour-linked figures were given senior civil service roles.
The Ipsos findings point to a widespread view that the government is plotting tax rises and come despite assurances from Starmer this week that “those with the broadest shoulders should bear the heavier burden”.
Starmer and Reeves have repeatedly said taxes on working people will be kept “as low as possible”, and before winning the election in July they vowed not to increase income tax, national insurance or VAT.
But 75 per cent of 1,088 British adults, surveyed online by Ipsos between August 23 and August 26, said they believed they were “fairly” or “very likely” to “personally” pay higher taxes, up from 56 per cent in May.
The share of people who expected Labour to increase spending on public services fell slightly to 55 per cent from 59 per cent previously.
Labour insiders are defensive about the party’s pivot from insisting ahead of the election that it had “no plans” for unadvertised tax rises to paving the way for fresh increases in October.
Some said Reeves’s inheritance — which she has quantified as a shortfall of £22bn in the current fiscal year — was genuinely worse than anticipated.
Others said Labour had been left little room for manoeuvre to discuss more extensive tax rises before the election when competing against the Conservatives’ “fanciful” rival tax-and-spend plans.
Given the choice, voters would most like to see people on incomes above £125,000 targeted for tax increases, with duties on tobacco and alcohol the second-most popular levies, followed by corporation tax, according to Ipsos.
Some 20 per cent of voters viewed capital gains tax as fertile ground for increases, the Ipsos polling showed, while only 10 per cent wanted to see higher inheritance tax.
Some party officials feel the new Labour government could have better landed their message that the Tories are to blame for the dismal state of the economy by involving more independent experts in auditing the finances of each Whitehall department.
But many voters have bought into the claims made by Starmer’s party about taking over the worst economy in decades.
Some 65 per cent of those surveyed by Ipsos said Britain’s economic problems were worse than the Conservatives admitted when they were in power, and 56 per cent said they believed that the circumstances Labour inherited were the worst since the second world war.
