Social media users have falsely claimed Keir Starmer’s net favourability score makes him the least-popular prime minister in British history.
Sir Keir Starmer’s approval rating has not plunged to the lowest of any UK prime minister on record, as social media users have falsely claimed.
The misinformation was shared last week by a Reform UK candidate in a TikTok post, first spotted by fact-checkers at PA Media, which garnered over 25,000 likes.
It includes a screenshot of another post published on social media platform X on 24 October, claiming that Starmer’s approval score of -38 is a “new record in British politics,” making him the “most hated prime minister the UK has ever seen.”
That original X post had been viewed just 60 times at the time of publishing this article but amplified to a much broader audience on TikTok.
A reverse image search shows that the line graph shown in the post was in fact published by the polling organisation More in Common, whose research shows Keir Starmer’s approval rating falling sharply between August and October 2024 to a low of -38.
More in Common calculates approval rating by asking voters whether they think the prime minister is doing a “good” or “bad” job, and deducting the percentage that responds “bad job” from those who respond “good job” to generate a net favourability score.
Its most recent findings on Starmer’s dwindling popularity are based on a polling sample of 2,073 adults in the UK surveyed between 9 and 10 October.
The data provided by More in Common does show that Starmer’s approval rating has plummeted since he swept to a landslide victory in July’s general election, bringing a 14-year of consecutive Conservative governments to an end.
Research by other organisations shows the same trend.
But the data does not show Starmer at a historic approval low for all British prime ministers, nor yet close to breaking that record.
Starmer’s popularity declining, but not at record-breaking low
More in Common, which has been conducting research since 2023, put the approval rating of former prime minister Rishi Sunak at a low of -41 in July this year.
Other polls, such as YouGov’s, put him as low as -29 in December 2023.
Other former prime ministers have also dropped much lower in their net favourability rating compared to Starmer’s recent score.
John Major’s approval rating fell to -59 in 1994, Theresa May’s to -49 in 2019, and Boris Johnson’s to -53 in 2022.
In October 2022, Liz Truss became the least-popular UK prime minister in polling history when YouGov research put her at -70.
