Sunak looks like he is toast, but too many don’t knows for Labour to get complacent

A new development for The Rest Is Politics podcast this week: we have tied up with JL Partners, a polling company Rory Stewart first got to know well when running for London Mayor, and who also did the polling for Theresa May.

We are intending to do a series of polls in the run-up to the UK General Election (and will be keeping an eye on the US too) and though yes, we will always ask voting intentions, (currently Labour 42, Tory 24) Reform 13, Lib Dem 10, Greens 5, SNP 4, Plaid 1) we will be on the lookout for less obvious stuff, and welcome suggestions from listeners and readers. I have never been a fan of voting intentions as poll headlines because they are based on a false premise ... "if there was a general election tomorrow, how would you vote?" There isn't an election tomorrow, and while this poll, like most recent polls, is dire for the Tories and pretty good for Labour, there is still a lot of uncertainty and doubt around the place, and a general anti-politics mood that is a danger for all parties.

Indeed, of a dozen leading politicians we tested, Keir Starmer is the only one with net positive ratings, and that is just +8. Rishi Sunak is the least popular, at -29, closely followed by Boris Johnson at -27, so I think we can safely assume that if recent reports are true, that Sunak will ask Johnson to campaign for him come election time, the only beneficiaries will be their opponents. We didn't bother with Liz Truss. We will wait to see how her save the world book goes down first!

We did a fair bit of polling on what I call thermometer questions, to assess how warmly people feel towards the two main party leaders and their attributes. Here, the news is really bad for Sunak.

In a list of fourteen positive attributes, from strong to determined, good in a crisis to gets things done, Starmer beats Sunak on all of them.

In a list of six negative attributes - sleazy, untrustworthy, posh, unprincipled, insincere, follower - Sunak wins 6-0. And, perhaps my favourite essentially trivial finding in the whole poll, four times as many people would trust Keir Starmer to put up a shelf as they would trust Sunak. Starmer also wins on who people would prefer to look after their kids, chat in a pub, make a Sunday roast (though neither eat meat) and take charge of map-reading on a road trip. They all speak to Sunak's big problem with out of touchness, and the sense that Starmer is just a more normal and regular human being.

More seriously, on the issues of greatest concern to the broadest number of people - the NHS, the economy/wages, cost of living/energy, inflation and illegal immigration/small boats - Labour enjoy leads on four out of five. Added to which it is largely the government's failure on dealing with the fifth of those that has seen them leaching support to Reform, for whose voters illegal immigration is No 1 priority.

But before Reform get too excited, putting so many of their eggs in the anti-net zero basket is not necessarily the vote winner they think (though you have to admire their brass neck in claiming they will wipe out waiting lists by inventing a number they claim is being spent on net zero, and saying they wouldn't spend it. Red bus anyone?) As for those Tories keen to get rid of Sunak and slot in a sixth leader since 2010, and the fourth since they won an election, by some margin people think that would be the wrong thing to do, and probably make matters worse for them. And before Labour start to think it is all over bar the shouting, I really would be a bit worried about how often, when it came to questions of both policy and personality, "don't know" was the winner.

So there is a lot to chew over and if you want to see the whole poll, you can do so on JL Partners site, become a subscriber to the podcast, or join The Rest Is Politics Plus. Or you can listen in to my chat with Rory on the poll in the latest episode here, in which he has an interesting potted history of polling, and we go into the main findings. We also do a deep dive on Narenda Modi and India as their election starts next week, and an interview with the Chief Minister of Gibraltar.

The continuing growth in listenership for the podcast shows there is huge interest in politics, and in serious sensible political debate, and I hope our polling can help further inform that debate in ways that people will find illuminating and interesting. And as I say above, we are very open to ideas for the kind of issues we should explore. Thanks for reading, thanks for listening.