Sunak’s approval rating slides again – new poll

Rishi Sunak continues to trail Sir Keir Starmer in the polls as his personal favourability rating slides further into negative territory.

The Prime Minister’s net favourability rating has fallen to minus 21, according to a poll published by Ipsos UK on Friday, with 47% of people saying they had an unfavourable view of him.

The figures are Mr Sunak’s worst since he quit as chancellor in July 2022, helping topple Boris Johnson, when Ipsos found 50% of people had an unfavourable view of him.

The poll, carried out between June 30 and July 3, found Labour leader Sir Keir’s ratings had improved slightly over the past month, with 32% saying they had a favourable view of him and 39% saying they had an unfavourable one.

There was more bad news for Mr Sunak when Ipsos asked about the qualities people look for in a prime minister.

On the factors people said were most important to them, Mr Sunak received overwhelmingly negative ratings while impressions of Sir Keir were more mixed.

Half of the 1,000 people polled by Ipsos said they had a negative view of Mr Sunak’s policies for dealing with the cost of living and his understanding of the problems facing people in Britain.

Some 42% said they had a negative view of his competence, 43% had a negative view of whether he kept his promises, and 45% had a negative view of his policies for improving public services.

For Sir Keir, the public were evenly split on his policies for dealing with the cost of living and his understanding of Britain’s problems, and had a net positive impression of his policies for improving public services.

But 35% of people thought he would not be competent as prime minister, compared with 31% who thought he would, while 30% said he did not keep his promises and 24% thought he did.

Cost of living

Gideon Skinner, head of political research at Ipsos UK, said: “The public put dealing with the cost of living, understanding Britain’s problems and competence at the top of their list for judging a potential prime minister, and unfortunately for Rishi Sunak negative impressions outweigh positive ones for all of them.

“Keir Starmer leads on most of the factors – albeit partly because he receives fewer negative scores, there is still room to improve his favourable ratings.

“Keir Starmer’s strongest suit is probably policies to improve Britain’s public services, one of the key issues to Britons and one of the few where either party leader gets more positives than negatives.

“Meanwhile, in terms of our regular trackers, Keir Starmer also maintains his lead over Rishi Sunak in general favourability ratings – in particular he has seen a boost among his own Labour voters this month.”