Rishi Sunak hits lowest approval rating since he quit as chancellor

Misery for Tories while Keir Starmer’s favourability score improves

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, with 47 per cent of people saying they had an unfavourable view of him.

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

The poll found Labour leader Sir Keir’s ratings had improved slightly over the past month, with 32 per cent saying they had a favourable view of him and 39 per cent saying they had an unfavourable one.

It comes during growing Tory gloom about Mr Sunak’s chances of meeting the five pledges he made at the start of this year. “They’re all going in the wrong direction,” one government source told the i newspaper.

Conservatives fear he won’t have progress to point to on his promises to halve inflation, grow the economy, reduce national debt, cut NHS waiting lists and “stop the boats” before the general election next year.

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 crisis and his understanding of the problems facing people in Britain.

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

Sir Keir’s ratings have improved over the last month (UK Parliament/Reuters)

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

The poll, carried out between 30 June and 3 July, found that 35 per cent of people thought Sir Keir would not be competent as prime minister, compared with 31 per cent who thought he would, while 30 per cent said he did not keep his promises and 24 per cent thought he did.

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.”

The pollster added: “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.”