Hi John,

Keir Starmer recorded a historic dip in public approval this May (with June data still to come). Despite Labour’s message of national renewal, despite the exhausting years of Conservative corruption and chaos – voters remain unconvinced.

More than two thirds of Britons now hold unfavourable views of the Prime Minister.

Labour’s loveless landslide last year – where the party secured two-thirds of the Parliamentary seats on one third of the vote – was initially described in the media as a return to stable, ‘adults in the room’ governance.

But perhaps, in this era of Britain’s heightened political decline, no such politics is possible?

Britain is more divided and more distrustful than ever. In May 2025, the Electoral Commission noted that just one in five Britons think that elected officials care about people like them.

We know that the main beneficiary of that discontent – as we saw at May’s local elections and in the polls – is Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

Source: YouGov

So why isn’t Starmer resonating – why doesn’t he feed people’s desire for change in the way that Farage’s performative politics does?

Your responses to our recent survey (view those results here) shine some light on that question. 83% of Open Britain supporters believe the government is “lurching to the right”, and a majority expressed concerns about Labour’s current approach to Reform UK.

Here are some reasons why our supporters – and many around the country – say that Starmer’s pitch feels like inauthentic and inappropriate for the present moment:

🗳️ First-Past-The-Post and Starmer’s “Winner Take All” Mentality

We’ve talked before about how First-Past-The-Post makes certain constituencies –certain voters – more important than others. In the current two-party battle between Labour and Reform UK, Starmer’s played the classic game of trying to win over those voters that may be swayed by Reform by playing on their terms.

Maybe for two more similar parties, that say disagree over a specific tax policy, that strategy could make sense. But it’s hard to appeal to Reform voters without alienating your base.

The infamous “Island of Strangers” speech was a textbook example. Starmer’s bid to garner sympathy from the anti-immigrant crowd was a two-front failure. It alienated likely Labour voters, and it came off as insincere pandering to right-wing Farage enthusiasts. It lost him support across the board.

🗞️ Press Fear and Media Blindspots

Starmer’s government seems to operate in fear of what the right-wing press will say about them. Reporting early in the Prime Minister’s tenure suggested that a deal had been struck with the Murdoch press, Starmer receiving an endorsement from The Sun in exchange for assurances that his government wouldn’t pursue the much-needed second stage of the Leveson press inquiry. On a recent visit to Albania, the PM brought just one news outlet with him to announce his new policy on asylum seekers – GB News.

In other forms of media, Starmer seems to be losing out completely. Nigel Farage has dominated on TikTok, amassing more followers than every other British politician combined. There is seemingly a failure to understand in how people communicate politically these days – Farage, like his friend Donald Trump, understands it well.

🏛️ Where’s the Vision?

In a broader sense, Starmer’s government hasn’t lived up to expectations for a Labour government. Cutting winter fuel allowance, maintaining the two-child benefit cap, slashing disability benefits, reinforcing Brexit red lines, appeasing unpopular figures like Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, cutting the international aid budget – these all seem like things his Conservative opponents would have done. What makes today’s Labour, Labour?

At the core of Starmer’s political failure thus far is a broad feeling of insincerity, a sense that the Prime Minister – as with the perception of most politicians – doesn’t care about the needs, desires, or aspirations of ordinary people.

With trust in politicians at rock bottom, people want more than competence or adults in the room – they’re frustrated, and they want to know that someone gets it. So far, Starmer risks looking like part of the same discredited system.

And speaking of that discredited political system, the only viable path forward is to start building a better one. Despite his early rhetoric about “fixing Britain’s foundations”, a functioning politics has not yet been a part of Starmer’s pitch.

It was never reasonable to expect that a new government would usher in stability or consensus. Our politics is one ruled by oligarchs and billionaires, where the strings of public opinion are pulled by media barons and social media titans, where our elections are distorted by a broken voting system that barely any other country uses.

We’ve never supported Labour, or any political party for that matter, because what’s actually important is fixing the democracy that every party operates under. Right now, our political system is fuelling distrust that’s empowering Reform. Starmer is not the cause of that problem – but he’s looking less and less like a solution.

Our job is to build a system that includes ordinary people, that makes them feel like politicians speak for them and the issues they care about. We already know what that looks like – a fairer electoral system, a press and a social media space that doesn’t manipulate our politics, and a campaign finance system that lets people trust that voters – not donors – are influencing their leaders.

Will you donate £9 today? This is the amount we asked for in the survey, and it will help power our campaigns and show that people across the UK are ready to fight for real democracy?

If everyone reading this gave just a little, we could reach tens of thousands more with our message, and keep the pressure on where it matters.

All the best,

Matt Gallagher

Communications Officer

Open Britain