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Keir Starmer is up against a government who have floundered a lot, refused to resign after multiple breaches of the ministerial code, been involved in all sorts of sleaze and handled elements of the pandemic poorly - and is still not beating them in the polls.
He was beating them in the polls until recently. Obviously lots of different theories why this is no longer the case. Personally I think the vaccine rollout, particularly compared to the rest of Europe, has handed the Tories a large boost.
aggi-
I think you're right - and whether the credit is due to the government or not, it has been impressive.
That said, so much has preceded this that could, by rights, have sunk a government,* but they've managed to weather it all. How?
*off the top of my head:
- Boris Johnson's "lots of people will die" approach to Covid and failing to close the borders (before Starmer, admittedly)
- Boris Johnson boasting about shaking hands with Covid patients and then nearly dying himself
- The awful numbers of Covid deaths
- The shortage of PPE and the handing out of contracts to friends
- Gavin Williamson's assessments fuck up Pt.1
- The inexplicable pre-Christmas easing of restrictions and then the Christmas lockdown
- Gavin Williamson's assessments fuck up Pt.2 (after his "cast-iron guarantees")
- Priti Patel's bullying
- Boris Johnson's latest affair
How can a successful rollout cover that up?
And how can Labour have failed so badly to make political capital out of the non-sensitive parts of that?
- Boris Johnson's "lots of people will die" approach to Covid and failing to close the borders (before Starmer, admittedly)
tbc
The stuff about polling is beside the point, really.
The crux of it is that Corbyn, despite being a poor leader with a terrible media rep and elements of his party actively stating they wouldn't vote for him, managed to get 40% of the vote in an election. He was up against very poor opposition, but I think there is also something to the idea that he had policies that people liked.
Keir Starmer is up against a government who have floundered a lot, refused to resign after multiple breaches of the ministerial code, been involved in all sorts of sleaze and handled elements of the pandemic poorly - and is still not beating them in the polls.
I'm not trying to score points in a Corbyn v Starmer debate here, just to illustrate that Starmer is hugely underperforming and that backing demonstrably popular policies (or any policies, for that matter) could be a way to try to mitigate that.
This video is silly but I enjoyed it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7lsRbDKOXg